


Don't Fail Me Now

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, Breathplay, Evil Peter, M/M, Malia Doesn't Exist, Manipulative Peter, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Rape, Stockholm Syndrome, Suicidal Thoughts, Tickets to Stockholm available here, Underage Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-03 23:31:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2892146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles goes to Derek looking for help. </p><p>He finds Peter instead. </p><p>Peter takes what he's wanted for a very long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this is dark. Please read the tags. And please let me know if I've missed any tags you think I should add. 
> 
> Thanks to Emma Sea for beta reading! 
> 
> The title and chapter headings are taken from "Toy Soldiers" by Marianas Trench, a really upbeat-sounding song with incredibly disturbing lyrics. I love it! 
> 
> ***  
> Also, I keep forgetting to tell people I'm now on tumblr:[thisdiscontentedwinter](http://thisdiscontentedwinter.tumblr.com)
> 
> ***

 

_ _

 

_They don’t know you_

_Not like I do_

 from “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench

 

 *** 

 

Stiles is absolutely sure he’s fucked up for life.

“Come on, pretty,” the guy says, and seriously, _pretty_? Fuck his life, and fuck his choice in guys. That’s not the worst of it though, because the dude follows that up with just about the most terrifying thing he possibly can: “Let me in.”

And suddenly it’s not this guy, or this back alley, or the fact that Stiles said he’d blow him, not give up his ass, but somehow the guy’s hand is shoved down the back of his jeans and his fingers are pushing at him anyway, because suddenly none of that shit even exists.

_“Let me in.”_

Suddenly Stiles is trapped in every nightmare he’s ever had, in increasingly small places, confined, chained, _constricted_ , and it _knows_ he’s there. Maybe it can smell him, the acrid stench of his fear sour and thick in the air. Maybe it can hear the desperate thumping of his heart, or the strangled whimpers that he tries his hardest to smother, but _can’t_. And it’s coming closer and closer.

_“Let me in.”_

He can’t breathe. He’s sucking air into his lungs as fast as he can, but it’s not working. His heart is palpitating, beating so fast that he’s terrified it’ll give out. He’s going to vomit, too. Sour, burning bile rises in the back of his throat and he can’t—god, he can’t _breathe_.

The guy is saying something maybe, but Stiles can barely hear him. Because the guy doesn’t exist, and the alley doesn’t exist, and nothing exists except his fear and his panic and his absolute fucking certainty that he’s going to die. His vision blurs, and goes gray at the edges. He can’t hear anything except the buzz of static in his head and the choking, rasping sound of his own useless breath.

_“Let me in.”_

Everything hurts. His lungs feel like they’re about to explode. He’s coughing, gasping, choking, and he can’t get any air.

If he had the breath, Stiles would scream.

If he had the breath—

But he doesn’t.

 

***

 

When he comes back to himself in tiny blinking increments and heaving breaths, he’s shaking and alone. It takes him a little while to figure out where he is. It’s an alleyway a few streets away from The Jungle. He doesn’t want to go back there and get his Jeep. He’s downtown now, and close to Derek’s loft. He’ll go there. Crash on the couch until morning. He’ll worry about the Jeep, and his dignity, in the daylight.

He likes Derek. He’s always liked Derek. There was a time when he seriously crushed on him, but that was back before everything, back before Stiles had the darkness running in his veins. Back when nobody or nothing could shut him up, not even the full force of Derek’s glower, back when Stiles still felt like a human being.

He still likes Derek, but in a different way. It feels almost like nostalgia, like remembrance wrapped in sweet regret, because he knows it’ll never happen. Stiles isn’t that guy anymore. It’s nothing but an echo now, that instinct in him that whispers to go to Derek’s loft, that he’ll feel safe with Derek, when he hasn’t felt safe in months. It’s only an echo, but Stiles wants to believe it.

Except when he bangs on the door, trying his hardest to keep his hammering heart from broadcasting his panic to every fucking wolf in the vicinity, it’s not Derek who opens the door to him.

It’s Peter.

 

***

 

“Stiles,” Peter says, his mouth curving up into a smile. “What an unexpected pleasure.” He lifts his nose and moves his head from side to side gently. His eyes narrow, but his smile broadens. “The Jungle?”

Stiles opens his mouth and then closes it again.

“You stink of vodka, and cheap cologne, and other men’s sweat.” Peter inhales. “How many men got their hands on you tonight? Painted their stench all over you?”

Stiles’s stomach clenches and churns. He hears the guy from the alley again. He hears his nightmares: _Let me in._ He takes a step back, struggling to keep a lid on his rising panic. He focuses his energy on getting the question out: “Is Derek here?”

“No.” Peter crosses his arms over his chest and leans in the doorway. He tilts his head as he stares at Stiles, and his smile fades. “Stiles? Are you alright?”

Stiles can’t meet his gaze. “Yeah. I’m just gonna go.”

“No. You’re not.” Peter turns away from the door and walks back inside.

 _Oh, fuck you, Peter, seriously._ He should just turn around and walk away, and not get into whatever stupid game Peter thinks they’re playing. But he really doesn’t want to go back outside, and be alone, and risk another panic attack.

Stiles follows him in, all the way through to the kitchen. He leans against the counter, trembling hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, while Peter plays good host.

“Tea?”

“Derek has _tea_?”

“No, _I_ have tea,” Peter says. “Which I keep here for pack meetings since I refuse to drink those awful protein shakes that Derek apparently exists on, and I got tired of tap water.” He rattles around in the cabinet. “I have some chamomile. That might calm you down.”

“I’m fine.”

Peter raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t call Stiles on the lie. He doesn’t have to, Stiles supposes. They both know Stiles is full of shit.

“Chamomile it is,” Peter says.

Stiles shifts his weight from foot to foot as he waits for the kettle to boil, and for Peter to make the tea. He doesn’t even want tea, but Peter has a tea infuser out and everything. And Stiles can’t be bothered waste his scant energy arguing about something so inconsequential.

When the tea is ready, Peter ushers him out toward the couch, gestures for him to sit, then presses the mug into his hands. Then he sits down on the chair opposite and drinks his own tea. “What happened tonight?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re shaking pretty badly for nothing.”

Stiles almost laughs, because it _was_ nothing. An abortive encounter with some random fucking asshole, and he took it and magnified it and turned it into a full-blown panic attack. Because apparently that’s who he is now. He’s the guy who’s so mentally fucked up that even an attempted hook up ends in a panic attack. It’s like the nogitsune took everything with him when it went and left him stripped bare, peeled back, every nerve exposed.

 “You think you’re the first person in the world who’s had to deal with the dark thing living inside him?” Peter’s mouth curls in a smile. “Stiles, you’re not even the first person in this _pack_.”

Stiles isn’t sure what that smile means. He can’t tell if it’s supposed to be sympathetic, or cruel or, somehow, both. But with Peter, attack is the best form of defence. “Oh, that’s cute. You think you’re a part of this pack.”

Peter has always responded well to sarcasm. His smile broadens, and his expression sharpens. It’s obvious he likes it when Stiles snaps back, which is creepy as all hell but, on some level, reassuring. Peter’s just about the only one of the pack who treats Stiles the same. He isn’t wary, like he’s afraid Stiles will break or, worse, he doesn’t look at him like he’s wondering if the darkness is still somewhere in him. Peter looks at Stiles with the same way he looks at everything: like he finds it all slightly beneath him, and is deeply amused by that. Arrogant douchebag.

The small spark of anger flares and fades in a heartbeat, and leaves an ache behind. For a second Stiles almost felt like his old self, but now it’s gone again and he knows he’ll never get it back. He doesn’t deserve to get it back, to be the old Stiles.

People died.

He takes a sip of his tea, then leans down to set the mug on the floor before he spills the lot. He should just go. Just go home and curl up in his bed and let the nightmares tear him apart, just like every night. Then maybe, one day, they’ll stop. Or he will. Maybe one day he’ll just decide he’s done with all this. Maybe everyone will be better off, himself included, if he just wasn’t here anymore.

It isn’t the first time he’s thought of suicide. It happens a few times a day. He doesn’t know if it’s a problem or not. Doesn’t know if his thoughts of taking his own life are any more serious than the others he has: he’ll move to San Francisco without telling anyone and start again. He’ll buy a plane ticket to some place on the other side of the world he’s never heard of. He’ll vanish from here and reinvent himself in some new place. Or maybe he’ll just vanish.

Peter’s holding his gaze like he can read every thought running through Stiles’s head. Maybe he can.

“It doesn’t go away, Stiles.” There’s nothing in Peter’s face to indicate this is a lie. “The darkness. It’s always there. Even when the madness is gone or, in your case, the demon, it leaves a shadow.”

Stiles knows he’s being manipulated—this is _Peter_ , of course he’s being manipulated—but that doesn’t make it a lie. “Don’t.”

Peter doesn’t listen. “It’s always there. The things you did, with your own two hands, the chaos you called forth, and the blood you spilled. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t you, because it wore your face. The demon, or the madness. It wore your face, and mine, and it took the things we knew and used them against the people we loved.”

“It wasn’t me.” Stiles stands—he needs to get out of here—but Peter is on his feet as well, and he’s stepping toward him.

“It was.” Peter is too close now. His breath is warm against Stiles’s face. “It was those hands, Stiles. It was those eyes. That mouth.” Peter’s gaze drops to his lips, and narrows. “That smart fucking mouth.”

White noise.

Stiles can’t move.

Peter hooks a hand behind Stiles’s neck. Presses his thumb against his jugular, and exerts just enough pressure that Stiles is forced to lift his chin to relieve it.

“Peter…” He’s terrified, heart thumping wildly behind his ribs. It must sound as loud as a barrage to Peter.

Peter’s gaze is cool and knowing. He keeps the light pressure on Stiles’s jugular with the thumb of his right hand. With his left hand, he grabs Stiles’s right wrist. “Quiet now. Just give me a moment to see it all fall into place for you.”

Stiles blinks, his eyes stinging. He tells himself the only reason he’s not trying to pull away is that Peter could rip his throat out in an instant, but he knows that isn’t true. At least, it isn’t the whole truth. He’s not fighting this because it somehow feels inevitable. Sooner or later another monster was always going to come along and destroy him. It might as well be Peter.

Peter inhales deeply. “Oh, yes. You’re seeing the predator again, aren’t you? I hide behind a smile, the same as you, and they let themselves forget. You let yourself forget too, Stiles. What am I to you? Zombiewolf? Creeperwolf? You’ve turned me into a joke, into a punchline, but guess what? That was a mistake.”

Stiles blinks again, and tears slide down his face.

A smile tugs at the corners of Peter’s mouth. His eyes gleam. “Oh, well aren’t you lovely when you cry? I’m glad. It’ll make this so much better.”

“Peter. Don’t. I don’t want—”

Peter tightens his grip on Stiles’s wrist, claws digging into fragile flesh. “And who said this has anything to do with what you want?”

He twists Stiles around suddenly, and shoves him back toward the couch.

 

***

 

Where’s his panic attack now to take him out of this?

He’s numb. He’s already sinking into shock, when he should be fighting. He should be yelling and screaming and telling Peter no, but he doesn’t. And not just because it’s pointless.

Maybe he knows it wouldn’t stop Peter anyway, so later he can pretend that by not begging he was able to keep a tiny shred of dignity.

Maybe he doesn’t want to give Peter the chance to laugh at him.

Maybe because a part of him doesn’t care enough to try and stop it.

Or maybe some strange sick thing inside him actually wants to be hurt and reviled and made to bleed.

Peter pushes him down over the arm of the couch, one hand on the back of Stiles’s neck, and the other tugging at his jeans. “These are tight. No wonder you stink of other men. I’ll bet they had their hands all over you, didn’t they?”

For a second Stiles is back on the dance floor at The Jungle, in that press of bodies, flushed and horny, and he wonders if this moment is punishment for that moment; the universe reminding him that he doesn’t get to be happy, not when he should be guilty. Not when he should be hurting. If he’d only been stronger, or smarter, or more careful, or _better_ , the nogitsune would never have chosen him as its host.

Peter grunts as Stiles’s tight jeans refuse to budge. He pulls Stiles back slightly, making room to get a hand underneath him.

“Don’t,” Stiles says, and here’s his panic again, a sickening, shuddering wave of it, then Peter has his fly open and suddenly Stiles’s jeans are being tugged down. He squirms and tries to pull away. “Don’t!”

Peter tightens his grip on Stiles’s neck. Claws dig into the soft unprotected flesh of his throat. “Quiet. I’ve been waiting years for this, Stiles. Don’t ruin it.”

Stiles whimpers. He clenches his fingers into fists. He’s crying again, or still, or something. Everything tastes like salt.

Peter keeps that hand on the back of his neck while he divests Stiles of his jeans. His underwear is next. The black and gray striped boxer briefs that Stiles had worn just in case—his breath shudders out of him as the thought hits him—in case he got _lucky_. Then both of Peter’s hands are on his ass, thumbs digging into the cleft, and Stiles jerks forward when Peter spits and then rubs it around Stile’s hole.

“Don’t!” He tries to twist away, but Peter’s too strong.

Peter leans over him, all heat and menace, and breaths against his ear. “It’s going to happen. The only choice you have to make is how much it’s going to hurt. My advice to you, Stiles, is to take the path of least resistance. Do you understand?”

He thinks so. He nods anyway.

“Show me you understand, Stiles.”

He’s cold. It takes him a moment to realize that Peter is no longer leaning against him. It takes him a moment longer to realize what Peter wants.

“I don’t think…I don’t, I can’t—” He’s not trying to be difficult. He knows he can’t run. He knows it’s going to happen, and he doesn’t want to make Peter angry, he just doesn’t think he can do this. It’s different, being asked to give when he knows Peter can just take. It shouldn’t be different, shouldn’t be worse, but it is. Just another way that Peter’s going to fuck with him tonight.

Peter slides a fingertip down his spine. “Show me, Stiles.”

Stiles wants to scream, wants to fight, but this is just like it was with the nogitsune. Whatever nightmare Peter has created for him, Stiles is stuck in it, helpless. He toes his trainers off. His tears are silent as he holds the arm of the couch for balance and steps out of his tangled jeans and underwear. His shirt is next. Stiles tugs it over his head and then he’s wearing nothing but his socks, and it should feel ludicrous, but he’s too fucking scared to feel anything but that.

Peter’s laugh is low and pleased. “You always were a clever boy.”

Stiles thought so once, but how can it be true if it’s led him here to this moment?

No, he can’t do this. He can’t. He takes a step away from Peter.

The slap is sudden. It’s brutal, sharp. It’s as loud as a clap of thunder. It leaves Stiles’s face throbbing. It leaves a stream of blood trickling out of his nose. It leaves him stunned, and wrenches him free of the dull shock that was softening the edges of his awareness.

This is real. This is happening.

Peter smiles and bends him over the couch again, and Stiles fights the urge to vomit.

“I wanna go home now,” he whispers, shaking his head.

Peter grips him by the hips and nudges his feet apart. His voice is sweet and dark, like molasses. “When we’re done.”

Stiles chokes on a sob.

 

***

 

His first time was going to be with Lydia, and she would have been beautiful, letting only Stiles see that sweet vulnerability that she kept hidden from everyone else, but he would never judge her for it. He’d protect her cold reputation fiercely. It’d be a secret how sweet and kind she was, a secret that maybe a few people would be able to read in his smile, but he’d never tell.

 

***

 

It hurts. It hurts more than he’s ever thought it would, and he doesn’t understand how people _do_ this. It’s too big, and he’s going to tear, and there will be blood, how is he going to pretend none of this ever happened if Peter rips him apart? It fucking hurts, and he wants to crawl away from the pain, but Peter’s fingers are digging into his hips and holding him down over the arm of the couch, and Peter’s dick keeps shoving in and in and in, and the thin, reedy wail that rises out of Stiles sounds like it belongs to a much younger boy.

 

***

 

His first time was going to be with Derek, because how was anyone on the planet allowed to be that hot? Stiles kind of liked girls and guys, and some days he wavered between them, and some days he thought that eventually he’d land on one side or another, and some days he didn’t care if he never did. Fantasies of Lydia and imagined softness and butterfly kisses had transformed into fantasies of Derek in his leather jacket and his glare, of stubble burn and something rougher. Rougher, but still gentle when it mattered.

 

***

 

“That’s it,” Peter croons in his ear. “That’s a good boy.”

Stiles curls the fingers of his left hand around the corner of a couch cushion. His right arm is gripping the back of the couch. Every thrust pushes him forward, and his stomach hurts where it takes their combined weight each time. The leather squeaks and rasps under his abraded skin. He can’t breathe.

Everything hurts, and he’s terrified that every thrust hurts more than the last, but somehow glides in smoother. Peter’s making moaning sounds behind him, and his fingers are claws again. He’s punctured the skin around Stiles’s hips, and Stiles can smell blood. He’s bleeding inside too, he knows he is, and god, he can’t go to the hospital after this. Even if Scott’s mom isn’t working, everyone knows who his dad is.

He’s crying again, or still, or something.

Peter thrusts harder, and jolts the couch forward. Stiles’s mug, sitting too close to the leg of the couch, rattles a few inches across the floor. Tea slops over the rim.

_You made me chamomile tea. You made me chamomile tea, and now you’re raping me._

In what universe does that even make sense?

The same one, maybe, where Peter leans down and licks a wet stripe up the back of his neck, and growls, _“fucking whore”_ and it sounds somehow like an endearment.

 

***

 

His first time was going to be with a stranger, because if nobody he was crushing on was showing any interest, then a stranger might. And it’d be better with a stranger in a lot of ways, because if he did something embarrassing—which he probably would—then at least with a stranger it wouldn’t matter so much. That way, by the time he was with someone who mattered, he’d have an idea what to do. So he put on a shirt that Danny said looked hot on him, and a new pair of black and gray striped underwear that made him look more grown up than his favourite Batman pair, and went to The Jungle to get some experience.

 

***

 

It lasts forever, and yet it’s over quickly. Time stopped making sense somewhere between then and now. Peter’s thrusts get faster, then faster still, and then he’s groaning as he comes, and it hurts again when he pulls out, and Stiles feels something wet leaking out of his ass, hot even against his feverish skin, and then, when it hits the air, suddenly cold. Too cold. He’s shivering.

He slides down onto the floor.

He can’t get enough air.

He can’t understand. For some reason he thinks that understanding is just outside his grasp. If he can reach it, if he can somehow make sense of this, then he’ll be himself again. Not this shivering, crying, trembling _thing_.

This isn’t him.

This can’t be him.

Again. Can’t be him again.

_Let me in._

Except he’s been this thing since the nogitsune, hasn’t he? This pitiful, frightened thing. He is reduced to a thumping heartbeat, to tears and snot, and to the rough, raw rasp of breath in his throat. He hurts, but he hasn’t got the strength to move. He’s hardly got the strength to shiver. He feels feverish and cold at the same time, unanchored, like he’s close to passing out. Like there’s nothing holding him here except the force of his own concentration, and he can’t… he can’t hold on.

A sob tears out of him, and the sound startles him. He didn’t intend to make any noise, but the distance between his body and his mind is growing larger. It was a crack a moment ago. It’s a gulf now. He’s scared. He can see his fingers twitching, tapping out some panicky tattoo on the floor, but he can’t _feel_ it.

“Stiles.” Peter runs his fingers down his spine.

Stiles flinches, and the noise that rips out of his throat this time is harsh and guttural, like the bark of a seal. An ugly sound.

“Stiles,” Peter says again, his voice low. A claw digs into Stiles’s lower back, and taps against his spine. “Get up. Come on.”

Stiles rolls onto his side, and uses the side of the couch to pull himself up into a seated position. The muscles in his stomach burn with the effort. Pain stabs his gut, and his ass, and a wave of nausea crashes over him. He fights the urge to vomit all over Derek’s floor.

Oh god.

Derek’s loft stinks of this now. Of him and Peter. Cum and blood. And all the bleach in the world won’t disguise it, not from werewolf noses.

“He’ll kill you.” Stiles wipes his nose on the back of his hand, and stares down at the slick trail of blood left behind. Then he looks up at Peter again. He wants to laugh, this is so ridiculous. Peter raped him, and Derek will rip his throat out, and nobody will come out a winner. Nobody. “He’ll kill you.”

“Who? Derek?” Peter smiles, pityingly. “Are you sure about that, Stiles? He doesn’t trust you. None of them do. They look at you, and they wonder if you’re really there, or if you’re just a passenger and something else is behind the wheel.”

Stiles doesn’t want to believe that, but he’s been afraid of it ever since the nogitsune. That even though the nogitsune is gone and he’s back, that it’s not the same. It will never be the same again. People died. _Allison_ died.

“That thing in you is gone,” Peter says, his voice low. Stiles can’t stop looking away from his fingers as he buttons his fly, at the way they brush over the fabric of his pants with a light touch he didn’t bother use on Stiles’s skin. “It’s gone, Stiles, but it left a hole. It left an open door.”

_When is a door not a door?_

_When it’s ajar._

Stiles swallows, and tastes blood. He flinches away as Peter squats down in front of him and reaches out to cup his cheek. “Don’t.”

“You’re weak, Stiles.” Peter’s tone is almost tender. “You can’t hold that door closed on your own, and sooner or later something’s going to slip through. You know it. You can feel it. And, Stiles?” He scrapes a claw down his cheek. “You’re not strong enough to stop it.”

“And you are?” Stiles meant for his words to come out in a derisive sneer. He didn’t mean for them to lift, achingly, with hope.

Peter holds his gaze. “I am.”

Stiles is shaking, tremors running through him, lodging somewhere in his bones. He’s so tired of being scared of everything and nothing all at once—of _possession_ —that it’s almost a relief to look at Peter Hale and know that this is his monster, right here. If it has a name, and it has a face, then Stiles won’t have to shrink from every shadow, from every noise in the dark. “H-how would you?”

“Anything that wants you, Stiles, has to come through me first.” And Peter is a monster. He’s proved that. He presses the point of his claw into Stiles’s cheek until the skin yields and a drop of blood, as hot as a tear, wells and slides down his face. “I know what you need. I can _help_ you.”

Stile can’t think straight. He feels like he hasn’t for months, and here’s Peter offering to help. And he knows, he _knows_ that Peter’s manipulating him, but there’s an insidious voice in the back of his head that tells him if he’s this easily manipulated then he fucking _deserves_ whatever Peter’s got in store for him.

He just wants it to stop.

If he has to hurt, if he has to be tortured by nightmares day in and day out, then he just wants someone else to be in charge.

It could be Peter.

Couldn’t it?

For a moment Stiles can’t breathe, and then a wave of fear crashes over him. The realisation of how close he just came to giving up, to giving in to a monster again, sickens him. The path of least resistance, Peter said, but what’s that except defeat?

“It doesn’t work like that,” he manages. “It _can’t_.”

“Why can’t it?” Peter rubs his thumb along the damp skin under Stiles’s eye.

Stiles wrenches his head back. “Because you just—you just—” He can’t even say the word aloud because, once said it can never be unsaid. It’ll be out in the world then, made real, and Stiles isn’t ready to look it in the face yet. “This isn’t _help_.”

 “It’s what you need, Stiles.”

He shakes his head. Impossible.

Peter wraps his warm fingers around Stile’s left wrist and draws his arm out straight. “You’re different. It changed you. You need a little darkness in you now, to settle you, to keep you grounded. I can give you that.”

Stiles watches, heart racing, as Peter extends his claws. Then catches one against the pale skin of his forearm, against the faint blue-green vein. Peter presses down, and Stiles moans and shakes his head, and then his skin yields, blood wells, and the claw digs deeper in.

“Don’t,” he whispers, light-headed with fear. “Peter, god, please.”

“Shh.” Peter’s gaze is intense. “You’re doing so well, Stiles. Let me have this.”

Stiles moans, afraid to pull his arm back and risk Peter opening the length of his vein. The pain is bearable, and it hurts no worse than any other part of him. A little sharper, maybe, a little more immediate than the dull throbbing ache that shudders through his body in time with his heartbeat. He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the side of the couch. His rising panic sucks the air out of his lungs.

“No,” Peter says, his voice quiet. “Open your eyes, Stiles. Watch.”

He opens his eyes. Blinks away tears. And watches as Peter’s claw opens up his vein.

Peter smiles at him, eyes bright with delight.

“No,” Stiles whispers.

“Shh. It only stings a little.” Peter pulls his claw out of the bloody wound. “And it feels so good afterward.”

Stiles wants to close his eyes again as the endorphin rush hits. He knows this is just biochemistry, but he’ll take it. He stares at the blood welling out of the wound and thinks, dimly, that he needs to bandage that. He might even need stitches. He feels a little woozy, but not in a bad way. He feels like he’s floated just far enough away from his body to not care about what’s happening to it. He’ll take that too.

Peter lifts his arm to his mouth and licks at his blood, and Stiles moans and feels himself slipping a little further.

“Good boy,” Peter says. His mouth is hot and wet against Stile’s wound. “Such a good boy, Stiles.”

Tears slide down Stiles’s face. “Please let me go now, Peter. Please let me go home.”

 

***

 

It hurts to walk. Peter has an arm slung around his shoulders and is guiding him down the stairs. They’ve left blood in the loft. Derek will know, but that’s okay. Peter says that’s okay, and Stiles is too tired to argue. He thinks that Peter’s wrong. He thinks—hopes—that Derek will burn with anger when he finds out what Peter’s done, but he’s not _sure_. It feels like forever since he’s felt sure of anything.

Peter helps him into the passenger seat of his car, and leans over him to clip the seatbelt shut. Stiles closes his eyes as Peter takes the opportunity to press his mouth against his throat. Nudges Stiles’s chin up to give himself more room. Stiles doesn’t resist. He sits there numbly, cold fingers twisted together in his lap.

It’s almost dawn. The sky is softening into gray at the edges.

It’ll be day soon, and Stiles needs to focus on the practicalities.

Peter murmurs something against his jugular, and then pulls away. He closes Stiles’s door and walks around the car to the driver’s seat. When he starts the car, music begins to play. It’s something classical that Stiles thinks he almost recognises, but Peter turns it off before he can think of it what it’s called.

Stiles leans his head against the window as Peter drives.

Maybe if he goes home and showers and goes to bed, maybe in the morning things will make more sense. Maybe by then he’ll know what to say to his dad if he asks if something’s wrong. And maybe he’ll figure out what to say to Derek and Scott, because they’ll know. They’ll smell it all over Derek’s loft, and maybe all over Stiles’s skin as well.

He’s always hated feeling weak, and now it’s the first thing they’ll all see when they look at him. They’ll look at him and they’ll see what Peter did. Every time.

Stiles starts to shiver again.

He thinks of his dad’s gun safe. He thinks of the bottle of sleeping pills in the back of the bathroom cabinet. He thinks of kitchen knives and rat poison and rope. He thinks of how easy it would be, and how he’s spoiled for choice. He thinks that at least this way his dad and his friends can stop mourning him by degrees, can stop trying to get the old Stiles back. He was never going to come back.

Maybe he’ll do it when he gets home.

He’s just so tired.

Peter reaches over and put his hand on Stiles’s thigh. Stiles presses his mouth into a thin line to try and stop his lower lip from wobbling, to try and stop himself from making any sound. His throat is sore when he swallows; just another ache, another twinge, another stab of pain to add to his collection.

Peter misses the turn onto Washington.

Stiles’s heart beats a little faster. “Peter?”

Peter doesn’t answer. Stiles curls his cold fingers around the sash of the seatbelt. Another missed turn, and he knows for sure. They’re heading in the wrong direction. Peter’s not taking him home.

“Where are we going? You said you’d take me home, Peter.”

Peter hums, and then smiles. “I said I’d take you home when we were done, Stiles.” His smile widens. “And we’re not done.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Don’t you want love

Don’t you want this

Don't you look so shocked

This was not the way I planned it

 

\- from “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench

 

 

***

 

Stiles hurts.

He lifts his hand to wipe his nose. It’s bleeding again.

A car pulls in behind Peter’s, the headlights in the rearview blinding Stiles for a second. He squeezes his eyes shut.

He should run, probably, while Peter is inside the shop at the gas station. Except Stiles isn’t even sure he can walk. His underwear and jeans are sticky and wet, and he doesn’t know if it’s blood or cum. He doesn’t want to know. His left forearm is sticky with blood as well, where Peter had opened his flesh with a claw. The wound is at least an inch long, and deep. It starts to bleed again as Stiles pokes the edges of it. The small sting gives him something to focus on, gives him something to distract him from the bigger hurts, the ones he doesn’t want to face yet.

He should run, except how can he outrun a werewolf? And where would he run anyway?

This isn’t a kidnapping. Peter hasn’t even taken his phone off him. It’s in the pocket of his jeans where it’s been all night. Stiles could call Scott or Derek right now. He could call his dad.

He doesn’t.

The driver’s door clicks open, and Stiles opens his eyes again. Peter settles into the seat and passes a plastic bag over to Stiles. He shoves another one in the back seat. Stiles stares at his bag dumbly.

“Go on, open it.” Peter’s voice is tinged with amusement.

Stiles opens the bag. A water bottle and a pack of Tylenol. Extra strength. He looks up again and meets Peter’s cool gaze. For a moment panic flares. Is Peter waiting to be thanked? That makes no sense, but when has Peter ever made sense? He’s a sociopath.

_You raped me, but thanks for the Tylenol._

Stiles doesn’t say anything in the end, and Peter hums in quiet approval as he opens the pack of Tylenol and swallows two of the tablets down with a mouthful of water.

Everything tastes a little like blood.

Peter puts the car into gear and they leave the gas station. Stiles doesn’t ask where they’re going. He’s not sure it matters.

 

***

 

The motel is clean but a little rundown. Stiles waits in the car while Peter books them a room. It’s daylight now, so Stiles doesn’t know why they’re stopping, and why they’re stopping here. He’s seen this motel before, on the long drive from Beacon Hills to San Francisco, but he’s never stopped here. The motel is a two-story L-shaped building, with a parking forecourt out the front, a small pool behind a fence, and a sign out the front promising vacancies and cable TV.

Peter returns to the car rattling a room key. Their room is on the ground floor, and Stiles is relieved there are no stairs to climb. He’s not sure he could. The room is neat and clean. A double bed. A tiny bathroom. A TV and a minifridge.  A kettle and complimentary coffee sachets. A dollar store abstract painting on the wall.

Peter goes into the bathroom and gets a towel. He lays it out on the bed. “Clothes off, Stiles, and get on the towel. Face down.”

“I want to go home, Peter.”

Peter tilts his head. “What did I just tell you to do?”

Stiles drops his gaze. His hands are shaking as he pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the floor. He shudders as he shoves his jeans and underwear down. God. There’s blood in his underwear. That’s definitely blood. And…he doesn’t want to think about what else. His stomach roils, and he swallows as bile rises. He doesn’t want to throw up. He doesn’t want to lose the Tylenol.

He lies on the towel, hiding his face in the crook of his arm. Doesn’t matter. Peter will be able to tell by his shaking shoulders and his hitching breath that he’s crying again.

“Shh.” The mattress dips as Peter sits beside him. “I didn’t plan it this way, you know.”

But he planned it some way. Stiles doesn’t want to know. He shudders as he feels a warm, wet touch against his spine. His panic spikes, his senses are confused, and it takes him a moment to realize what it is: a washcloth. Peter is wiping him down with a washcloth.

It’s soothing and horrifying at the same time.

Peter drags the washcloth down the planes of his back. “Tell me about the nightmares.”

What’s to tell? Some nights he still wakes up screaming.

Most nights.

It’s worst in the mornings though. He sees the weight of it then, in the black shadows around his eyes, dark as bruises. He hates the way his dad looks at him, worry bleeding out of every pore. He hates the way his own reassuring smiles are all fake, brittle, each one a hair’s breadth from crumbling. He’s terrified of the spaces the nogitsune hollowed out inside him, like a termite burrowing into wood, leaving tortuous, twisted paths inside him, bringing him closer and closer to inevitable collapse.

“I can still feel it.” It shouldn’t feel like a relief to say that, but Stiles unclenches his fingers anyway.

Peter makes an approving sound in the back of his throat, and slides the cloth lower. “You don’t need to pretend with me.”

Stiles makes a face into the crook of his arm as Peter brings the cloth down to his ass, and begins to wipe him there. It stings when he brushes the cloth against his hole, and he flinches.

“You’re fine,” Peter says. “It’s stopped bleeding already.”

Stiles’s heart clenches as Peter eases his legs apart. “Peter…”

“Just getting you cleaned up, Stiles.” His voice is low with amusement. “If I wanted to fuck you again, I’d already be fucking you.”

Stiles's entire body shudders.

Peter rubs damp circles on the prickling skin of his inner thighs. “After this, you can sleep for a little while.”

Stiles doesn’t know if he can. Maybe he already is. This could be a nightmare. He can count his fingers all he wants, but it could still be a dream. All of his dreams are about powerlessness, about being trapped, about being possessed against his will. This could just be another manifestation of that. Just another way his body is being bent to the will of another, and Stiles has been reduced to a silent, impotent scream that nobody can even hear.

Nothing has felt real for months.

He turns his head so he’s not speaking into his arm. “Why are you doing this?”

Peter smooths his hands down Stiles’s thighs. “Doing what?”

The word sticks in his throat. He shakes his head and turns his face away again.

Peter stands up and moves away. Stiles hears the squeak of the tap in the bathroom sink, and the spurt of water in the basin. Peter's back in a few moments, tapping his fingers against Stiles’s shoulder. “Come on, get under the covers.”

Stiles’s body aches in places he doesn’t want to think about. He clambers under the comforter and the stiff hotel sheets, and huddles there. He hears the rustle of clothing behind him, and squeezes his eyes shut. When Peter slides into bed beside him, he tries not to make a sound.

Peter puts a hand on his hip and jostles him into position until he’s spooning him. A wolf thing, maybe, Stiles thinks as his tears slide hotly down his face. Peter’s putting his scent all over him again. He can feel Peter’s half-hard dick pressing against his ass, and he wants to pull away, but Peter splays a hand across his abdomen. A clawed hand, sharp points tapping against his taut skin.

“Go to sleep, Stiles. Save the tears for when I want to see them.”

Stiles wipes his face furiously with his hand. 

Peter presses a kiss to the back of his neck. “Good boy. That’s my good boy.”

 

***

 

Stiles wakes when his phone buzzes. He opens his eyes to find Peter watching him from the chair in the corner. His mouth is curled up in a slight smile. He’s leaning forward, forearms on his thighs, hands dangling into the space between his knees. His hands are strong, the fingers blunt. No claws now, but the wolf is always just under the surface. It’s in that smile. It’s in the way Peter lifts his chin and inhales through his nose, tilting his head as he chases some scent on the air.

“Answer your phone, Stiles.”

Stiles pushes the comforter back warily. His phone is lying on the floor. His dirty clothes aren’t. Stiles spots them on the counter above the minifridge, folded neatly. Cleaned? There are takeout containers beside them. The thought of food makes his stomach clench and roil.

He slides out of bed and onto the floor. Grabs for his phone, and pulls his legs up. Curls in on himself. By the time he taps the screen of his phone with a trembling finger, he’s already missed the call. He checks his texts.

Eight from his dad. Five from Scott. Three from Derek. One from Kira. Four from Lydia. He could almost plot a graph in his head with those numbers. These are the people who care. This is how much they care.

Only three from Derek.

He wonders if it should sting more than it does. But the numbers don’t mean anything, not really. Maybe Derek and Scott are together, so only one of them is texting him.

He reads the texts. They start with his dad’s _Where are you?_ and get increasingly frantic. Stiles’s fingers shudder across the screen when he realizes Derek knows: _Where are you? Is Peter with you?_ And then, from Scott: _Please call me. Need to hear you’re ok. We’re looking for you. We’ll get you back._

He glances up at Peter.

Pete’s smile grows. His canines gleam. “Derek hasn’t stopped calling me all morning. Apparently he’s got it in his head that I’ve abducted you.”

“If I tried to walk out of here, would you stop me?”

“Yes.” Peter huffs out a breath of laughter. “But you’d never try, so it’s a pointless distinction.”

Stiles blinks at the door, and wonders if he’s really so easily trapped. The nogitsune broke him, and now he’s crippled by his fear. Peter’s right. He’s like one of those animals they try to release into the wild that refuses to leave its cage.

“It’s a shame,” Peter says in a quiet voice.

Stiles looks up at him.

Peter presses his lips together in a sympathetic grimace. “You were such a chatterbox, Stiles. What happened?”

His voice cracks. “You happened.”

“No.” Peter’s tone is calm. “Don’t blame me for this. In fact, all the whimpering you did last night is the most I’ve heard out of your mouth in _months_. You’re not the same boy you were. I think it’s your attitude I miss the most.”

_Me too._

He’d known himself back then. He’d thought there were parts of him that were unassailable, that it didn’t matter how often he got beaten up, or beaten down, that his _spirit_ was unbreakable. It didn’t matter how much he hurt, it wouldn’t even matter if he died—and god, he’d come close plenty of times—because he was doing the right thing. He was fighting alongside his friends and, okay, he didn’t need an anchor like Scott did, but he had one anyway, and that was it. He’d built everything around it.

The sword had slid so easily into Scott’s gut.

And Allison. Allison is dead.

Everything Stiles had ever thought he could trust has crumbled into dust.

Himself.

He can’t trust himself anymore.

He sets his phone down on the floor and curls his fingers around his kneecaps. Closes his eyes, and doesn’t open them again until he hears the rattle of spoons in cups. Peter is standing up. He checks the kettle and flicks the switch to turn it on.

“I’m making chamomile tea,” he says. “You can have some to settle your stomach, then try some takeout.”

“I need my Adderall.” His voice is dry and rough.

“Do you have any?”

Stile shakes his head.

“Too bad then.”

“Coffee then,” Stiles says. “Something with caffeine.”

“Caffeine will stop you from sleeping.”

Maybe, sure, but it’ll also stop him from losing his shit and that seems a hell of a lot more important right now. Stiles sucks in a deep breath and holds it until he thinks he’s okay to speak. “My body responds differently to stimulants. It’ll calm me down, help me focus.” 

“I can do those things for you, Stiles.”

Stiles hugs his knees tighter. “Please. Just let me have a coffee instead.”

“No.”

“Peter…” His breath shudders out of him. “I don’t know what you _want_ , but it would be a whole lot fucking easier if I could just have some caffeine!”

“I want you to relax, Stiles.” Peter’s gaze is wide, a little amused, or curious. “And I want you to get back on the bed for me now.”

Stiles clambers onto the bed, folding his long limbs around himself.

“Face down. Close your eyes.”

Stiles wishes he could just pass out. Just unhook himself from consciousness and float away for a while. That’d be a superpower he could get behind. When he was a kid he’d thought it’d be the best superpower in the world, even better than flying. He could leave his body to do all the mundane stuff he hated, like sitting in class, or going for a dental checkup, or clothes shopping with his mom. He could just press a button and skip forward, start his life again when it got to a good bit. Except later it turned out that all those hours spent whining and complaining in long queues at the mall when the sales were on…Stiles wouldn’t give up that time spent with his mom for anything, however tired and cranky they’d both gotten. This, though. He wants to skip this.

Peter sits on the bed beside him and splays a hand between his shoulder blades. “You have such lovely skin. So soft and pale. I could map out constellations with your moles.”

Stiles swallows and hides his face in the crook of his arms.

“I can see why the nogitsune wanted you. You’re holding so much potential in this body, Stiles. You could be something wonderful. Something breathtaking.” He leans closer, breathing on the back of Stiles’s neck. “When it was in you? I’d never wanted to fuck you more. And don’t tell me the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Now, that’s a lie, Stiles.” Peter digs his fingers into the bunched, tense muscles of Stiles’s shoulders. It feels almost good. “Do you think it would have chosen you as a host unless there was something in you that was compatible? Something that was right?”

“I was weak. Scared.”

“And you hated it. You always have.” Peter presses his mouth against the first knot of Stiles’s spine. “It exploited you, yes, but it also gave you what you’d always wanted. For once, you got to be strong.”

Stiles makes a dissenting sound in the back of his throat, but it’s out of habit more than anything. If it comes out of Peter’s mouth, it must be a lie. Except he’s not sure that anything Peter has said to him since this whole thing began last night—how it is only a night, when it feels like a lifetime?—has been a lie. Truth isn’t immutable. Truth is the most subjective thing in the world. Stiles believes that. And suddenly it seems like Peter’s version of the truth is the one that fits Stiles the best.

He _had_ been strong. It had burned hot in his veins. It had felt so fucking _good_.  He’d been terrified and exhilarated all at once, locked away in some distant part of his mind where he wasn’t in control, losing himself by degrees, and not knowing if he should be screaming or laughing.

Peter isn’t the only monster here.

 _Hurt me._ Stiles whimpers into his arms. _Hurt me._

He’s too much of a coward to say it aloud, but Peter understands him anyway.

“Good boy,” he murmurs, his mouth moving against Stiles’s skin. “Give yourself to me, and I’ll put you back together.”

Hot tears squeeze out from behind Stiles’s eyelids.

His mom had a blue vase. His dad called it The Ugly Blue Vase. And it was ugly. It was a weird, squarish squat thing. It was mostly blue, but also gold and green as well, in a splotchy kind of marbled pattern. It was an antique, his mom said, as thought that excused its ugliness. One day when he was about five, Stiles had broken The Ugly Blue Vase.

 _“Shit.”_ It was the first time he’d heard his dad swear. It was that, more than anything, that had convinced Stiles this was an utter disaster. He’d started crying, and his dad had gathered him up into a hug. _“Oh, hey, c’mon now, kiddo. We’ll get some superglue and put it back together, okay? Your mom won’t even notice.”_

It hadn’t worked.

Not only couldn’t they get the pieces to stick—except on Stiles’s fingers for some reason—but the entire thing leaned to the left so badly that it kept tipping over, and every time it tipped over the pieces, squishy with glue, had kind of smooshed out of place all over again.

 _“Two things,”_ his dad had said when his mom had walked back in the door from grocery shopping. _“One, your son and I both love you very much. And two, it was an ugly vase anyway.”_

His mom had picked out the biggest pieces to use in a mosaic, and swept the rest into the bin. _“Some things you just can’t put back together, but thank you for trying.”_

Stiles had known, after she’d died, that he was one of those things. He feels it again now. He is full of sharp, jagged edges that refuse to slot together anymore. He is shards and fragments and dust.

“Make it stop,” he whispers. “Please.”

Peter hums. Stiles shivers as he feels the press of a claw against his spine, then the slow drag of it across his skin. A sudden sting, and Peter groans as Stiles begins to bleed. “One day, I’ll play join the dots over every inch of your skin.”

Stiles doesn’t argue.

 

***

 

He’s faint when Peter finally helps him into the bathroom. He angles his back to the mirror to see the network of shallow cuts carved into his skin. He’s not sure if it’s hunger making him feel faint, or no Adderall, or shock, or blood loss. The heat of the shower ignites the sting in every cut, and Stiles leans his forehead against the tiled wall and moans.

He wonders if this is how Peter intends to keep him. It feels a little like being drunk. It might be what getting high is like. Stiles doesn’t know. He’s never gotten high. The stoners at school didn’t exactly extend an invitation to the sheriff’s kid to join them in the woods during lunch break. He was also totally paranoid that if he even _thought_ about it his dad would somehow know. Then werewolves and shit turned out to be a thing, and reality was so fucking weird that who needed to bend it any more?

But this strange floatiness is okay. It’s kind of nice not to feel any pressure to understand, to make sense of everything that’s happened with Peter. It’s a relief, and Stiles will take it.

The beat of the hot water against his stinging back feels good, and Stiles sighs in regret when the water is shut off.

Peter smiles at him when he helps him out of the shower and wraps a towel around his hips. “Still with me, Stiles?”

“Mmm.”

Peter leads him back into the room, and sits him on the edge of the bed. He sets a takeout container down beside him. The curly fries are cold now, and congealed and gross, and Stiles’s stomach rumbles. He’s not sure if it’s because he’s hungry or because he wants to throw up.

“Here.” Peter holds a mug out to him.

Peter and his fucking tea. Stiles reaches out a shaking hand and takes the mug, and _shit_ , it’s coffee. Peter made him a coffee after all. He gulps down a mouthful, almost overcome with gratitude.

Peter sits down in the chair again, and watches him.

It takes a few minutes, but Stiles slowly feels like he’s coming back into himself. His thoughts aren’t as scattered and all over the place. He’s got a little focus back. “I need to call my dad, Peter.”

Stiles assumes he’ll refuse, but Peter only smiles slightly. “Yes, you do.”

Okay. That was unexpected. “And I need some Band-Aids.” He holds his arm out. “This one you did last night is kind of deep.”

“Mmm.” Peter runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “That one’s my favorite. My first taste.”

Stiles tries not to feel the shiver that runs down his spine. “I need to know what’s going on. I need to know what you want.”

“Are we going to go through this every time, really?” Peter tilts his head on an angle. His smile inches up a few degrees. “I want _you_ , Stiles. And from where I’m sitting, it looks like I’ve got you.”

“What _for_?”

Peter regards him silently for a moment, and then raises his brows. “Because possessing the things I want brings me pleasure. And I’ve wanted you for too long to deny myself.”

“You said you’d help me.”

“I will. I _am_.” Peter leans back in his chair. “Now eat your fries, Stiles. You need to keep your strength up.”

 

***

 

It’s midday. Stiles doesn’t know why he’s fixating on that tiny detail, but it seems a ridiculous time of day for this. It should be the middle of the night. It should be raining. It shouldn’t be the middle of a bright, sunny day in California.

His dad answers on the second ring. “Stiles!”

“H-hey.” His voice snags in his throat. “Hey, Dad.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m okay, Dad.” It’s a version of the truth, and it’s the only one that Stiles feels comfortable giving. He’s sitting on the floor, at Peter’s feet. Peter’s claws scrape over his scalp. It tickles. Stiles isn’t just trying to protect his dad. A part of him recognizes that he’s trying to protect himself as well. He can shape his own reality. If he decides it didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen and he doesn’t have to cry about it. He doesn’t have to let his dad hear him cry any more than he already has in the past few months.

“Stiles, Derek said—” It’s his dad’s turn to choke on his words. “He said at the loft, that Peter… where’s Peter, Stiles? Is he there with you?”

“Yes.” He tilts his head as Peter slides his hand down and scraps his claws against his jugular. His pulse jumps. “He’s here. He’s not hurting me.”

“Stiles, son, where are you?”

“Dad, I need you to listen.” Stiles turns his head and looks up to meet Peter’s gaze. Peter hasn’t told him what to say. In many ways, that makes it harder. It’s like last night, when he undressed without being asked. Stiles is making these steps on his own. Whatever is happening to him here, he’s already become complicit in it. “I’m gonna stay with Peter for a while, okay? He’s helping me.”

“Derek said there was blood, Stiles.” His dad’s voice is calm now. He’s found his professional voice. His sheriff voice, not his dad voice. “Can you tell me if you’re being threatened?”

“Dad, he’s helping me.” Stiles holds Peter’s blue gaze.

“Stiles… Jesus.”

“I’ll come home soon, Dad.”

“When?”

“When I’m better. When he puts me back together.” When Stiles ends the call, his dad is still talking, still pleading, 

Peter leans down and presses his mouth against the top of Stiles’s head. “Good boy, Stiles.”

Relief rushes though him. He closes his eyes and drops his phone on the floor. This is his truth now. This is all he has to believe.

 

***

 

They leave their phones at the motel. Peter says it’s better that way, and Stiles agrees. He doesn’t want his dad to track him down and get between him and Peter. Peter’s a monster. Stiles is too, probably.

They head south when they reach the main highway.

Peter lets Stiles play with the radio, and only growls when Stiles runs through every channel at least three times. “Do you need more coffee, Stiles?”

“Yeah.”

They stop somewhere on the outskirts of Sacramento, at a Wendy’s. Stiles drinks his takeout coffee in the car while Peter goes into the CVS next door to buy Band-Aids and a tube of Neosporin. When he gets back to the car, Stiles holds his left arm out and watches as Peter dabs the ointment on the wound on his arm. His forehead is creased with a frown, as though he’s concentrating on the task intently. Stiles guesses that human first aid is foreign to werewolves. Most wounds they have would be closed and healed by the time they could get a Band-Aid out of the box.

“You have to keep it shallower.” He swallows. “Please.”

Peter glanced at him, amused. “I won’t let you bleed out, Stiles.”

“No, I know that.” His heart beats a little faster. “But, please. This one really hurts.”

Peter’s gaze narrows. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I—” He shakes his head to try and focus. “It does hurt.”

Peter pinches the edges of the gash together and sticks a Band-Aid over it. “That wasn’t the lie.”

Stiles bites his lip. “Oh. Well, um, I know now. I know you won’t let me bleed out.”

Peter sticks another Band-Aid on, then releases Stiles’s arm. He regards Stiles silently, his mouth turned up in a knowing smile.

Stiles stares at him for a moment. He thinks back to last night when he took his clothes off. He thinks back to the phone call he made to his dad. He knows what Peter wants. Shaking, he extends his right arm.

Peter hums, pleased, and curls his fingers around Stiles’s wrist. His grip is loose but warm. He lifts Stiles’s arm to his mouth, turning it so that his teeth are close to the veins on the soft underside of his wrist. His mouth is hot and wet, and Stiles shivers when it touches his skin. Then Peter lifts his head, and smiles, and raises his other hand.

Claws gleam.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles whispers as his skin yields like wet tissue paper. The sting, the scent of blood, and the rush of endorphins. “Peter, shit. _Peter_.”

“Does that feel good, Stiles?”

“Y-yeah.” His voice stutters, his heartbeat does, but it’s not a lie, and Peter knows it’s not.

Peter’s intent gaze catches him and holds him even as he draws the claw further down his forearm. “And you’ll give this to me every time?”

Stiles shudders as he realizes his dick is getting hard. _Fuck._ How is that even possible? “Yes!”

Peter lifts his nose in the air and sniffs, and smiles so broadly that Stiles knows he can smell his arousal. “I knew, Stiles. I knew you liked a little darkness in you.”

Stiles moans, blinks, and tears slide down his face. “I don’t want to! I don’t want to be like this!”

“Shh.” Peter withdraws his claw, then lifts Stiles’s arm and licks a wet stripe up the shallow cut he made, tasting the blood. “You’re being so good, but you were always a little bit like this, even before the nogitsune. A little different from other people, a little smarter, with something in you that set you apart from them. Something that was always just a bit out of sync. Maybe that’s how the darkness found you.”

Stiles nods, even though he isn’t sure if Peter’s even talking about him anymore.

“And you’ll give me this, won’t you, like a good boy?” Peter holds his gaze as he licks his arm again.

Stiles squirms, chokes on a breath, and nods.

Peter drops his arm, then reaches over and covers Stiles’s erection with his hand. His eyes narrow as he licks blood off his bottom lip. “And this, too. This is mine.”

“Yes,” Stiles says, and he’s never meant anything more in his life. Peter is his monster, his savior. Peter is the only power in his shrinking universe. He moans as Peter presses the heel of his hand against his aching dick. “Yes, Peter. Everything is yours.”


	3. Chapter 3

Don’t you want love,

Don’t you fight back

Know this will hurt less if you just submit

 

            From “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench           

 

***

 

 

Peter has a place in…Stiles thinks they’re in The Mission. Stiles doesn’t know San Francisco that well. He sees a street of pastel terraces with bay windows that all look a little alike. There’s an organic grocery store on the corner, with a laundromat next door and some sort of Not For Profit on the other side. Peter’s place is about halfway down the street. Peter pulls the car into the narrow garage, and then leads Stiles back out onto the street. He unlocks the gate that opens up onto the front door of the house.

Stiles hears people walk past behind him on the street. He feels no connection to them at all, just a curious sort of regret, as though he’s no longer inhabiting the same spaces as they are, no longer a part of a world he’d once understood.

He follows Peter inside.

It’s dark, after the brightness of the street, and Stiles squints.

“Wait.” Peter puts a hand on his shoulder, and turns him so that he’s facing the front door. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

Peter rubs his thumb against his neck. “Close your eyes, Stiles.”

Stiles obeys, flinching slightly as he feels the brush of cloth against his face. Then Peter’s tying whatever it is snugly around his eyes. He wonders if he should panic now that he’s blind, but the thought is almost academic. There’s no rush of anxiety behind it, no sense that even if he should panic that he _could_. He’s too tired to be truly afraid.

Peter turns him around again. “Stairs.”

The stairs creak as Stiles makes his way up them, one hand gliding along the smooth wooden handrail. Climbing the stairs makes Stiles feel a little breathless. He’s not sure if it’s fear or hunger making him lightheaded, or if it’s because he’s blindfolded.

He thinks of those stupid trust games that Coach Finstock thinks foster team spirit, or something. He remembers being blindfolded, and following Jackson’s instructions, knowing, just fucking _knowing_ , that Jackson was lining him up to walk into a tree. It hadn’t been an exercise in trust, as it turned out, but an exercise in futility. So is this, probably. Except for some strange part of him that believes Peter won’t hurt him. At least, not blindly. Not for a cheap laugh. Not without a _purpose_. Stiles might not be able to grasp the purpose behind Peter’s actions, but he’s not stupid enough to think there isn’t one.

“Three more steps,” Peter says, and Stiles tilts his head to the sound of his voice. “Then turn right.”

It’s frightening. Not enough to make Stiles panic, but enough to make every step uncertain. He feels as shaky as a newborn colt, movements jerky and unpracticed. He’s sure he’ll stumble into a wall, so when Peter puts his hand on the small of Stiles’s back and guides him around the slight turn at the top of the stairs, it’s such a _relief_.

“House rules,” Peter murmurs, his lips pressed against the shell of Stiles’s ear. “The blindfold stays on.”

Stiles wets his dry lips with his tongue. “Why?”

Peter slips his hand under Stiles’s shirt and rubs his thumb across his spine. “Because that’s the rule.”

“Something—something you don’t want me to see?”

“I don’t want you to see _anything_ , Stiles.” Peter’s stubble rasps against Stiles’s ear, and he shivers. “I want you to get to know the darkness. Keep walking.”

It falls into place, then. At least, a fragment does, but Stiles feels better for it. Peter isn’t hiding the apartment from Stiles. There’s no horror movie scene of headless dolls and bits of things in jars awaiting him, no wall-to-wall photographs of Stiles doing the shopping, collecting the mail, undressing in front of a window. Probably. No, Peter’s leaving him adrift here, cutting him off from his most valuable sense: his sight. He’ll only have Peter to rely on. Peter’s making himself Stiles’s only connection to any world outside his own head. Outside the spaces the nogitsune carved in him.

Peter intends to break him down even more.

Stiles wouldn’t have thought that was even possible. But this is Peter’s game, and he’d be dumb to think he knows better than him. That, at least, is something he knows is true beyond a doubt.

Peter leads him, hand on the small of his back, into a room. Stiles’s fingers brush against a doorjamb. The toes of his shoes bump over the edge of a rug.

“Shoes off.” Peter takes his hand away.

Stiles toes his Converse off. He feels dizzy without Peter’s touch. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly under the blindfold, and draws in a deep breath to try and center himself. He wonders if Peter has drugged him, if that’s the reason that he’s been so detached, almost spaced out since Peter took him. He half-wishes it were true; he’d love to deny all responsibility for his own quick capitulation and blame it on something pharmaceutical, but he knows drugs have nothing to do with it. Today he’s eaten takeout, and drunk bottled water and coffee from Wendy’s, and Peter hasn’t had a chance to tamper with any of it. Whatever’s going on is all down to Stiles, and the cocktail of chemicals his own body has been producing since last night: the epinephrine coursing through him is fucking with his nervous system, causing his palpitations, his dizziness, his confusion. Add in his forced detox from Adderall, and no wonder he can’t think straight.

“A few more steps and you’ll feel the bed.”

Stiles nods, swallows, and moves further into the room. He stops when he hits the bed, and turns around and sits. Folds his hands into his lap, and waits. Fights another bout of dizziness.

The comforter on the bed feels soft. Stiles wonders how long it will be until it’s covered in his blood. Even now he can feel the web of thin wounds across his back pulling as he moves.

“Shirt off,” Peter says.

Stiles reaches blindly for the hem. He fumbles for a moment, then pulls the shirt over his head. He drops it beside him—either onto the mattress or onto the floor, he can’t tell—and hesitates with his fingers on the fly of his tight jeans. The metal button is cold against the side of his thumb.

“Good boy.”

Stiles lifts his hips to shove his jeans and underwear down. He’s not hard, not like in the car earlier, and that’s okay. That’s a complicated thing he doesn’t want to deal with. That’s a line between being complicit—which is the same as being _smart_ , because he doesn’t want Peter to get angry—and being hard for it. His dad always said that in situations like this, you did whatever the guy with the gun wanted.

Side effect of being the sheriff’s kid: dinner table talk about what to do in hostage situations.

That’s not exactly what this is—a hostage implies ransom, something of value to exchange—but Stiles doesn’t think there is a word for what this is. It’s not exactly an abduction either. Stiles hasn’t tried to resist. He doesn’t even know what this is, not really, and that’s okay. He doesn’t need to know. He just needs to obey. He’s pretty sure that’s what his dad would tell him.

His body curls in on itself. His breath hitches.

“Shh. It’s okay. Do you want to sleep now?”

No.

Maybe.

He’s tired, but he’s buzzing too, and he’s already fucked up his sleep patterns enough for today. But it’s pretty easy to imagine that sleep is the best option he’s going to be given here.

“Yes,” he whispers. Then: “Please.”

He’s taken by surprise when Peter leans down to press his lips to his forehead. “Okay. I’ll wake you in a little while.”

Stiles lies down. He waits for Peter to pull the blankets up over him, and then clenches his fingers into fists, digging his blunt nails into his hands.

“Leave the blindfold on.”

Stiles jerks his chin in a nod, and listens to the floorboards creak as Peter leaves the room.

 

***

 

The bathroom is across the hall from Stiles’s room. He hears the toilet flush once, and then the hiss of old plumbing as the tank fills again. The kitchen is to the right, toward the back of the apartment. The clatter of a spoon in a mug is faint but unmistakable. Peter and his fucking chamomile tea. Shortly afterward Stiles hears the soft tread of footsteps past the doorway of his room and then the sounds of a television.

So the living room is to the left, probably the front room, with those bay windows that overlook the street. Stiles can hear a little bit of traffic noise. Once, a loud siren. Ambulance, not police. Stiles knows the difference.

The afternoon stretches on.

He wonders if he should be jumpier.

Since the nogitsune he’s been terrified of being alone, of being in the dark. But with Peter nearby, he hasn’t got the energy to flinch at shadows. All his abstract fears have fallen away like ashes, because Peter Hale is filling his universe.

It’s a sick sort of relief.

He dozes, once or twice. He doesn’t have nightmares.

He doesn’t take the blindfold off.

 

***

 

It’s dark when Peter comes back. The narrow crack of light that Stiles had caught distracting glimpses of on either side of his nose is gone. Peter doesn’t talk. He puts a hand on Stiles’s shoulder and rolls him gently from his side onto his back. Then he draws the sheets down.

Stiles’s stomach clenches. He struggles not to twist away again. He tries to force that flight-or-fight instinct to fucking die, because it can’t help him here. Peter curls his hands around his ankles, and pushes his legs up. Stiles can’t stop the noise that rises in his throat like a whimper. He tries to swallow it back down, but it’s too late. Behind the blindfold, tears clump in his eyelashes.

The mattress dips as Peter climbs onto the bed. He is heat and weight between Stiles’s bent knees. His hands feel big when he splays them against Stiles’s inner thighs and pushes his legs further up, further apart. When he lowers himself into the cradle of Stiles’s thighs, Stiles whimpers again and bites his lip so hard he tastes blood.

“Mmm.”

Like a moth to a flame. Peter leans over him and presses his mouth to Stiles’s. It’s not a kiss, not exactly. Peter laps at Stiles’s bleeding lip with his tongue, and a shudder runs through them both.

Stiles can feel the hot, blunt head of Peter’s cock dragging against the cleft of his ass, and then notching against his sore hole. He freezes, moans, and shakes his head from side to side.

Peter shifts, the mattress dips first to one side and then the other, and then Stiles feels something cold and slick against his hole. Lube? Is that lube? Yes, he wants that. He shifts his legs further apart to show that he can meet Peter halfway. If Peter isn’t going to tear into him dry like last night, Stiles won’t fight him.

This is being _smart_.

He thinks of his dad. He imagines a reunion that might not even happen. He imagines his dad’s face crumbling a little, relief and regret both at once. He imagines his dad pulling him into a hug, holding him like he’ll never let him go again.

 _“It’s okay, son. It’s okay. You did the right thing, the_ smart _thing.”_

In all his fantasies, Stiles is blameless. In all his fantasies, the things he’s done shatter into a million pieces and get swept into the trash and are forever forgotten. In his fantasies, he and his dad both put the nogitsune behind them, and the twisted things it said and did when it was wearing Stiles’s smile.

He wonders, just for a second, if a part of his dad is glad he’s gone. It must be easier to deal with focusing on finding Stiles than on fixing him.

Peter nuzzles his throat for a moment, and Stiles lifts his chin and turns his head to allow him access. Peter growls his approval, and the sound is the wolf’s. Stiles shivers, his skin prickling into gooseflesh. His breath sounds harsh to his own ears, fast and uneven. His anxiety is rising as the heat grows between their bodies, and he doesn’t want it, but he does, because the sooner Peter starts the sooner it will be over, and he wants _that_. He wants it to be over.

Peter opens him up with two lubed fingers, and Stiles’s body jerks.

“Shh,” Peter murmurs against his throat. “Shh, Stiles.”

Stiles’s pulse thumps against Peter’s mouth, and he groans as Peter removes his fingers and slowly pushes his cock inside. It stings at first, and then it’s fullness, and pressure, and it hurts, but it’s not like last night. It’s bearable, and Peter is making shushing noises and nipping softly at the skin of Stiles’s throat. Stiles wriggles a little to try and ease the discomfort, and Peter rubs his stubbled jaw against his cheek.

“That’s it.” Peter rocks his hips gently. “Don’t fight it.”

Stiles bites his lip again and nods. He’s trying. His twists his fingers in the sheet underneath him. He needs something to hold onto, before he’s swept away. If he could just _see_ , it wouldn’t feel so unbalanced, so precarious. He’d have something to focus on then apart from sensation. As it is, he feels like he’s standing on the edge of a precipice, and there’s nobody to catch him when he falls.

He wants to see Peter’s face. He wants to read the intensity of his gaze. He wants to know what this _means_.

“Peter, Peter, please.” He wets his lips. “Please let me take it off. I want to see. Please.”

Peter stills for a moment, then presses his fingers against Stiles’s mouth. “Soon. In a few minutes, yes?”

Stiles nods, tears of relief welling behind the fabric of the blindfold. He’s scared, he’s tired, he’s hurting, but all these things don’t feel quite real. They’re distant, they’re echoes, they’re not happening here and now. They’re happening to some other boy in some other place; some other boy that Stiles isn’t even sure he recognizes.

Peter takes him by the hips. He hold Stiles closer, and flips them suddenly, and Stiles gasps and arches his back as the angle of Peter’s cock inside him changes—a white flash of _something_ behind his closed eyelids, too complicated to be just pain, too brief to define as anything else—and he’s straddling Peter. Peter keeps his hands on his hips, using his strength to keep Stiles moving, rocking him up and down gently until Stiles is moving on his own.

Everything feels hot and slick, and not terrible. Stiles puts his hands on Peter’s chest, shivering as his palm rubs against a hard nipple.

He’s looked, before. He’s looked, because the Hales are genetically blessed or something. No snub noses and moles for them. He’s always noticed Derek more, because Derek looks like he fell out of a fashion spread in GQ, but he’s looked at Peter too. He can’t pretend he hasn’t. His smirk, his snark, and his knowing fucking gaze. It wasn’t always just a shiver of disgust that ran down Stiles’s spine.

He didn’t want this, not the way it’s happened, but he didn’t _not_ want it either.

He’s beyond fucked up.

He was broken a long time before Peter found him.

“Move for me,” Peter says, his voice straining a little.

Stiles lifts himself up, knees digging into the mattress on either side of Peter. His thighs strain. He lowers himself down again just as Peter arches his hips, and _fuck_ , that’s deep. He whimpers, and pulls one hand off Peter’s chest to press against his stomach.

“Can you feel me there, Stiles?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.” He rocks down against Peter. Everything inside him is aching, throbbing, protesting as Peter’s cock forces spaces that weren’t there before.

“I want to fill you with so much cum your belly will swell with it.”

Stiles chokes on a breath.

“Keep moving, Stiles. Be a good boy.”

He’s never done this. He wants to tell Peter that, but of course Peter already knows. It’s mostly instinct, maybe, knowing which way to move, but it’s not _all_ instinct, and Stiles knows he’s not practiced enough to be good at this. He’s not _coordinated_ enough to be good at this. There’s an intricacy to this, a way of moving that’s as rhythmic as dance, and Stiles is bad at it. Peter’s hands on his hips help a little, guiding him which way to move, but every time Stiles feels a new twinge of pain, or of something that isn’t pain, it jolts him out of whatever measured movements he’s managed to fall into.

“Keep moving.” Peter digs his fingers into Stiles’s hips. “You’re doing fine.”

Stiles almost barks out a laugh, it’s so absurd, but then he moans as Peter grips him more tightly, grunts, and hammers into him. It’s fast, it’s unexpectedly rough, and he can feel Peter tensing underneath him suddenly. Stiles freezes too, in anticipation, and then Peter’s coming, his body shuddering, and Stiles slumps down onto his chest, exhausted.

They breathe together loudly in the quiet.

Peter runs a hand down Stiles’s sweat-slick spine, then rolls him gently off him and onto the mattress. Stiles makes a face as Peter’s cock slides out of him, and everything down there feels wet and gross and sore. He wants to curl up into a ball when Peter pushes his thighs apart to inspect him. He’d never been more glad of the blindfold than in this moment.

“No blood,” Peter says after a moment, and lets him close his legs again. He rubs the heel of his hand along the jut of Stiles’s hipbone. “How was it?”

Stiles swallows. “I don’t know.”

The mattress dips as Peter shifts his weight, then Peter’s breath is hot against Stiles’s cheek. “You really do overthink everything, don’t you?”

Stiles jolts as he feels Peter’s thumbs on his cheekbones, edging up underneath the blindfold. For a second he forgets it’s night, and squeezes his eyes shut as the blindfold is pushed off his face. It’s Peter’s low laugh that makes him cautiously blink his eyes open at last.

The only light in the room is coming from the hallway outside. It’s not enough to blind him. He gazes at Peter in the gloom, looking for the monster hiding behind the planes of his handsome face.

Peter takes the blindfold—a scarf, Stiles realizes—and wraps it around Stiles’s left wrist several times. He knots it gently. “Do you know what the Stoics thought about pleasure?”

Stiles knows. “That it was the absence of pain.”

“Such a clever one.” Peter smiles. “But that was actually the Epicureans. They believed pleasure was the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. The Stoics were a little different. They believed that it was possible for a wise person to be happy, even whilst feeling pain because pain, Stiles, is something we cannot control. And it we cannot control it, we shouldn’t let it control us.”

Stiles holds his gaze. “I can be happy even when I’m hurting?”

“Of course you can.” Peter rubs his thumb along his jaw. “Of course, I’m not sure either the Epicureans or the Stoics touched on your delicious little masochistic streak.”

“I’m not—”

“If you can get hard when I claw you, you can get hard when I fuck you.” Peter leans forward and brushes his mouth against Stiles’s. “Can’t you?”

Stiles’s eyes flutter closed. “I don’t know.”

It’s the truth. The idea doesn’t scare him or disgust him, he just honestly doesn’t know. A part of him is almost curious. A few days ago the idea of getting fucked would have made him hard, and tonight showed him that it doesn’t have to feel like he’s getting torn apart. And there were flashes of something there that wasn’t pain. So yes. Yes, he probably can get hard when Peter fucks him. Not today, but sometime in the future. It’s not impossible. Peter believes he can, and Peter’s been right about everything so far.

Peter kisses him, opening the seam of his lips with his tongue. At first Stiles thinks he’s chasing the taste of blood around his mouth, but he doesn’t stop. The kiss is big enough for Stiles to fall into and lose himself.

“Stiles.” Peter nips at his lower lip, and catches it between his teeth. “You’re being such a good boy.”

Stiles moans and wriggles closer.

Those words shouldn’t warm him like they do.

 

***

 

It’s late when Peter takes him to the shower. He unties the blindfold from around Stiles’s wrist, and helps him step into the tub. It’s an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub. It’s big, and deep, but not easy to navigate when he’s feeling this off-kilter. He doesn’t trust his own sense of balance. Peter stays close by, standing outside the tub and helping Stiles get clean, and not complaining when water gets on the floor.

Afterward, Peter towels Stiles down and wraps the scarf around his eyes again, and leads him into what must be the living room. He presses gently on Stiles’s shoulder to ease him down onto his knees.

Stiles waits for Peter to tell him what to do next. 

He’s never been so quiet, so still, before in his life.

 

***

 

When Stiles was eight, he visited San Francisco with his parents. They didn’t go to the Aquarium of the Bay or the Exploratorium like Scott did that time with his dad though. Instead, Stiles sat with his dad in the waiting room at the neurology clinic and read comic books and did puzzles and got tired and cranky when they were there for _hours_.

They didn’t do anything fun in San Francisco. They stayed in a boring hotel room and Stiles curled up on the couch watching TV until it was way past his bedtime, only half-aware of his parents talking in low, hitching voices from the bed.

It wasn’t until much later that Stiles even realized that his world was crumbling around him. He didn’t know that the tiny moments he shared with his mom—tiptoeing down the hallway in the middle of the night with her to get candy from the vending machine while his dad snored in bed—would be among his last memories of her.

At the time he hadn’t known he should value these things, and his parents hadn’t told him, or at least they hadn’t told him in any way he’d understood. At the time he’d hated going to San Francisco, and cried every time because they never did anything fun, and all wanted was a plush shark from the aquarium like Scott had.

He’d screamed at his dad that it wasn’t fair.

He’d screamed the same thing at his dad months and months later when his mom was gone.

Screaming about it didn’t make it better.

 

***

 

Stiles reaches up behind his head to adjust the blindfold as he feels the knot start to slip. The blindfold doesn’t feel like a punishment or a torture now. It feels like comfort. As long as Peter’s beside him, he feels no need to see where he is, or poke around in his surroundings. He’s more calm, or exhausted, than he’s ever felt in his life. As long as Peter will take the blindfold off when he _needs_ to see, when he’s afraid he’s been cut adrift, he doesn’t mind wearing it.

The television is playing at such a low volume that it’s just noise to Stiles. He yawns and leans back so that his head is resting against the couch. His shoulder is leaning against Peter’s leg. Peter’s fingers card through his hair. Stiles has enough cushions that sitting on the floor is comfortable enough.

“Still hungry?” Peter asks in a quiet voice.

Stiles lifts his chin and opens his mouth, and Peter huffs out a low laugh and slides a piece of cheese between his lips.

It’s good cheese. Stiles can’t remember if it’s the goat’s cheese, or the stuff from the sheep, but it’s good. Stiles’s experience with cheese doesn’t go much beyond Cheetos, or whatever’s melted on the top of his pizza, but Peter talks about it like it’s fine wine or something. They had wine as well, even though Stiles was limited to a few sips while Peter held the glass at his mouth.

Stiles knows that these tiny acts of kindness are more dangerous than anything else Peter does. He _knows_ that, but he wants them anyway. Because it’s smart to do what the guy with the gun—the claws?—says, but it’s dangerous to believe him. It’s even more dangerous to start to need him.

Stiles isn’t dumb. He knows what’s happening here. He just doesn’t know if it’s worth resisting. He’s already broken.

Stiles is tired, even though it feels like he’s slept more today that he has in months. Maybe he’s finally paying off his sleep debt, or maybe it’s the adrenalin dump finally hitting after the stress of how this whole thing started with Peter—funny how he shies away from naming it, even in his head—but it’s not a bad feeling.

When Peter tugs gently at his hair, Stiles doesn’t resist. He lifts himself up off the floor and onto the couch, and lets Peter spoon him. Peter rests his chin on Stile’s shoulder and breathes against his ear. His fingers trace warm trails across Stiles’s chest and abdomen. When those blunt fingertips transform into pointed claws, Stiles doesn’t even flinch.

“You’ll give me this?” Peter asks in his ear.

“Yes,” Stiles whispers, and wonders why it feels more like a choice when Peter asks than something that’s as inevitable as the dawn. He closes his shaking fingers around Peter’s wrist as Peter slides his claws across his abdomen in a circular pattern and thinks, wildly, of the Spirograph he had when he was a kid. His dad tried to show him how to make patterns, but Stiles was too unfocussed for that, too easily distracted, and nowhere near patient enough to work at something that took any amount of concentration. He’d scoured the paper instead, digging the tip of the pencil deeper and deeper until the paper tore apart.

Peter breaks his skin, and Stiles shivers and tightens his grip on Peter’s wrist. Peter’s other hand, loose and warm, follows the sharp angle over Stiles’s hipbone, moving lower and lower, until his fingers are stroking the hair at the base of his dick.

Stiles moans, his dick stiffening. “Oh, Jesus. Peter.”

The claws of Peter’s other hand draw lines of blood across Stiles’s abdomen. Stiles jerks at the sudden sting, and then he smells blood. He can feel the pulse in Peter’s wrist under his fingertips. He shudders out a breath, and presses Peter’s hand harder against his skin.

Peter growls in pleasure, and nuzzles Stiles’s throat. He shifts his other hand up to Stiles’s abdomen, presses it there for a moment, then moves it back down to his dick. His fingers are wet with blood when he curls them around Stiles’s dick and begins to coax it into stiffness.

“Fuck,” Stiles whimpers, because it’s sick. It’s sick and he shouldn’t be getting turned on by this. Peter’s fingers are slick with blood, then tacky, but then Peter swipes his thumb over the head of Stiles’s dick, and it’s wet and leaking and hot and slick again. Stiles chokes out a sob, the sudden rush of his arousal taking him by surprise, and grips Peter’s wrist tighter.

More blood. More heat. More Peter.

He wants more.

“Please,” he murmurs. “Please, please, please.”

Peter angles his head and bites his shoulder. His teeth are blunt, but even the promise of fangs, of a wolf’s bite, is enough to make Stiles moan. Peter bites a little harder, teeth marking Stiles’s skin, then licks at the indentations he’s left. “Come on, Stiles. Tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know!” He’s seventeen. Before yesterday, he was a virgin. And suddenly he’s about to come because Peter’s giving him a hand job with his dick lubricated in his own blood. He’d never even imagined something like this before today. “I don’t know!”

“You are going to be my favorite thing, Stiles. I have so much to teach you.”

And suddenly Stiles can see it. He’ll be Peter’s sick little apprentice; eyes open to drink in all the darkness, coming apart when he smells blood. He doesn’t recognize himself. He doesn’t much care. He’s barreling toward the precipice, the pleasure and the pressure building inside him, coiling tight as a spring. 

Peter tightens his grip on Stile’s dick. “Dirty boy.”

Peter swipes his other hand across Stile’s chest, opening up a row of cuts. Stiles cries out, and shudders, and _comes_ in a confused rush of pain and pleasure, and light bursts behind his eyes, and he blacks out for a second, or a minute, or a lifetime, and when he comes back to himself Peter is still holding him, drawing bloody lines across his skin.

Stiles shivers, skin tingling, fingers twitching as he rides out the afterglow.

Peter’s claws draw it out.

It feels good when he bleeds. It feels like a sudden relief of all the pressure that’s been building in him. It feels a lot like coming did, except it lasts longer, and it leaves him floating in the same boneless bliss afterward.

“You are a revelation,” Peter whispers in his ear, the words lifted by the smile in his voice, delight and desire intermingled into a tone thick with sweetness. “I want to spend my life peeling all the layers off you.”

“All the way to the bone,” Stiles murmurs. “But then how would you fix me?”

“Don’t sell yourself short.” Peter rubs a damp thumb down his cheek. “I could spend years peeling you back, piece by piece, and hardly scratch the surface.”

“I don’t think I’m that complicated.”

“I could sum up every member of that pack with a single well-considered word each,” Peter says, his smirk curving against Stiles’s ear. Stiles smiles as well, and warms with pleasure. “None of them terribly complimentary. But not you. You’d take an entire dictionary.”

“Years and dictionaries,” Stiles huffs under his breath, sighing.

“Stiles?” Peter rasps his stubble against Stiles’s throat. “We’re not going to sleep on the couch.”

“Okay,” Stiles murmurs.

Peter laughs and pokes him gently in the ribs. “Come on. Bedtime.”

Stiles grumbles as Peter pushes and prods until he’s sitting up. Peter takes him by the hand and draws him to his feet, and down the hall to the bedroom.

Stiles follows blindly, uncomplainingly. His tired body stings slightly as his skin pulls—endorphins flood him with sleepy, sated pleasure—and he yawns as he goes.

 

 

***

 

Stiles is woken by a nightmare.

For the first time in months, it’s not his.

“No,” Peter says behind him. “No, Matty, it’s okay, it’ll be okay. Oh, god. Oh god.”

Stiles can’t breathe. He shoves the blindfold up to stare at Peter’s face in the darkness.

“Oh god.” Peter’s eyes are open, but he’s not awake. “Burns. It _burns_.”

Stiles reaches out and places his hand on Peter’s chest. Peter grabs his wrist with both hands. Fingers, not claws.

“Help. Help us!”

“Peter.” Stiles swallows. “It’s okay, Peter.”

Peter’s mouth twists. The whites of his eyes shine in the gloom. He growls, and shows his fangs. He’s terrifying, and terrified. 

“You’re okay.” Stiles can’t hear the sound of his own voice over the roar of blood in his skull. Whatever this is, it’s not a part of Peter’s plan, and Stiles has to rely on his own instincts. And he can’t leave Peter to burn, not again, even in his nightmares. Especially not in his nightmares. Stiles has had enough to know there’s no way out from the inside. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

He keeps holding him, keeps talking to him, just like he’s woken up countless times to find his dad doing for him.

After a few minutes, Peter’s eyes flutter closed.

When is a monster not a monster?

Stiles stays awake for a long time in the darkness, listening to the sound of Peter breathing.


	4. Chapter 4

One day you will

Learn to love me

One day you will

Thank me, you’ll see

 

from “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench

 

***

 

 

Hours bleed slowly into days.

Stiles bleeds too.

He is calm but wary. He still expects something to jar him out of the comfortable lassitude he’s sunk into with Peter. He spends his days dozing, waiting, and fucking, and everything else has fallen away. He likes that it has. He’s cocooned here, in this place, in his blindfold, but he’s no longer powerless. Because Peter might hold all the power over Stiles in their waking hours, but at night it’s Stiles who curls toward Peter and whispers to him until his nightmares fade.

They fit, him and Peter. Maybe it’s sick and wrong and twisted as all fuck, but they fit, and Stiles hasn’t fit anywhere in just about as long as he can remember.

The only thing he’s really afraid of now is discovery. He’s afraid that he’ll be taken away from Peter and forced to look everything that happens here in the face. He’ll be forced to see how wrong it is, and he doesn’t want that. He’s _calm_. He’s never been calm in his life. The old Stiles is gone, and anyone that wants him back didn’t know him, not really, and this new Stiles—the one who is calm, who is quiet, who is pliant and good and malleable to Peter’s will—is _better_. This new Stiles wears his own skin better than the old one ever did.

His skin.

His stinging, bloody skin, every thin cut a testament to Peter’s claim. Each one an underscore to his whispered words of possession, to his jealous growls. Each one a declaration of his claim.

On the fourth or possibly the fifth day, Peter takes him outside. They walk around the block, and Stiles turns his face away from the traffic and toward the storefronts. They walk slowly, Stiles’s hand curled in Peter’s, and he half wonders what people think—older guy and almost-jailbait twink boyfriend, inappropriately affectionate father and son, or carer and not-quite-right-in-the-head charge—or if people even notice them at all.

The day is cloudy, casting a muted pallor over the street.

They stop in at a Chinese restaurant and get takeout for lunch and then, on the way back, go to the organic grocery place across the street. In addition to their short list of groceries, Peter buys Stiles a box of chocolate covered coffee beans. Caffeine, to self-medicate his ADHD.

“I don’t know how long it will work,” Stiles says as they wait in line for the cashier. He doesn’t feel the itch under his skin he usually does, or the restless energy that stirs back and forth in him and keeps him unfocussed and scattered, but that doesn’t mean it won’t come back. Maybe whatever he’s got with Peter—the fucking, the sensory deprivation with the blindfold, the blood stuff—maybe that’s no different than trying some new medication. His body will adjust eventually, the baseline will shift, and they’ll need to try something else.

Peter puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about that.”

Stiles shifts from foot to foot uneasily. “I don’t… I don’t want things to go bad.”

He doesn’t want to give Peter any reason to be angry with him. He doesn’t want to be terrified of Peter again, like he was that first night.

“Stiles.” Peter’s smile is warm. “You’re overthinking things again.”

Stiles grabs two peanut butter cups and sets them on the counter with the rest of the groceries. “That’s kind of my thing, Peter.”

“I know. But it’s not always a good thing.”

When they leave, Peter puts a few dollar bills in the charity tin beside the cash register. It’s for a children’s hospital. Stiles wonders if that’s a habit of his. It sits at odds with everything he thought he knew about Peter. It makes him uncomfortable, because how much else has he missed, and not just about Peter? Stiles always thought he was smart, that he noticed details other people didn’t, but he was more blind than he ever guessed. He was ignorant, proud, the definition of hubris. It was his fatal flaw, because he should have seen it coming. He thought he could take on the power of the Nemeton. He thought he could _win_. And it didn’t matter if he’d had no choice—he’d needed to save his dad—he’d still thought he was smarter, stronger than an ancient power so old, so dark, that its roots might have reached the center of the earth.

Stiles deserved the nogitsune, but he doesn’t just want to atone for the things he did when it possessed him. He wants to atone for the person he was before that. A smart-mouthed arrogant _child._

“Hey,” Peter says as they cross the street to the house. “What’s that face for?”

Stiles shakes his head, afraid to answer in case he bursts into tears in the middle of the street.

Peter opens the front door and Stiles steps inside. He takes the scarf off the bannister post and closes his eyes. He feels better just holding it, more centered, but he wants to put it on. “Can I?”

Peter juggles with the grocery bags and the keys in the door. “We’ll eat in the kitchen. Can you find your way there?”

“Yes.” Stiles ties the scarf over his eyes.

He knows his way through the apartment now. He knows how many steps there are from the front door to the hallway upstairs. He can find his way by touch now, by dragging his fingertips along the walls, by counting his footsteps and the gaps in the wall that are doorways. The hallway, he knows from experience, is free of furniture.

The kitchen is at the back of the apartment. Stiles has seen it once, when Peter took the blindfold off him so that he could help make sandwiches. It’s a clean, airy space. The fixtures are probably more than a decade old. Stiles had wondered if Peter owned this place before the fire, but he didn’t ask. There were no personal touches that he saw. No photographs stuck to the refrigerator, but Peter’s not exactly sentimental. Stiles can’t imagine he ever was, even back then.

Another clever judgment, and Stiles silently castigates himself for it as he steps into the kitchen. He puts his right hand out and makes for the table. Because how does he _know_ that Peter was never sentimental? At night, Stiles has heard him call out for his family, for the adults and the kids who died in the fire that should have killed Peter as well.

That did, in its own way.

In the same way that the nogitsune killed Stiles.

He sits down at the table, and listens to Peter unpacking the groceries and the Chinese takeout. The takeout smells good. Stiles’s stomach rumbles. His appetite is back again, and Peter is careful to keep him fed with a diet of iron-rich food. He has him taking supplements as well.

After a few minutes Peter sits down beside him.

The takeout smells good. Stiles finds himself leaning toward it.

Peter laughs. “What do you want to try first?”

“The chow mein.” Stiles folds his hands in his lap.

“Hmm.” Peter’s chair creaks as he shifts. “I prefer this when you’re naked and kneeling on the floor.”

So does Stiles. He feels his face burn.

Hand feeding has become as much a ritual as the blood-letting. It’s almost overwhelming to become the sole focus of Peter’s attention. Those moments are quiet, but they’re laden. Stiles can feel the weight of them for hours afterward.

“But…” Peter touches a forkful of chow mein to Stiles’s lower lip, and Stiles opens. “I think I can hear your stomach growling from here.”

Stiles smiles as the tines of the fork slide over his lip. He snags the chow mein with his teeth and Peter slips the fork free again. Stiles chews and swallows. It’s good. “I am pretty hungry.”

Peter feeds him in silence for a few minutes, alternating each forkful of food between them. Then he laughs. “Next time we’re not getting Chinese.”

“Why?”

“I want something less messy I can feed you with my fingers.”

“This tastes good though.”

“Hmm.” Peter presses the pads of his fingers against the cushion of Stiles’s lower lip. “Do these?”

Stiles sucks Peter’s fingers into his mouth, and hums his agreement around them.

“Your fucking mouth,” Peter says, his voice wavering as Stiles sucks his fingers. “Do you even know how districting it is? Straws, and pens, and that ridiculous candy you eat.”

“Twizzlers,” Stiles mumbles around Peter’s fingers.

“Always something going in that mouth,” Peter breathes. He draws his spit-slicked fingers out, and slides them back in again. “Your bottom lip, with marks in it from your teeth. Always chewing or sucking something. Such a tease.”

Stiles doesn’t need to be too clever to know where this is going. He runs his tongue between Peter’s index and middle fingers, and leans back. “Peter, I’ve never…”

Peter rubs his thumb along his lower lip, and hums.

Stiles’s breath catches. How can this be more frightening than offering Peter his blood? “But I want to.”

It’s not a lie. Stiles isn’t sure it’s the truth until he says it, but his heartbeat doesn’t stutter when the words come out. Everything. He promised Peter he’d give him everything. He doesn’t want there to be any part of him that Peter doesn’t own. He doesn’t want there to be any place the darkness can retreat to, and regroup. With Peter it was always going to be everything or nothing, and it was too late for nothing from the moment Stiles knocked on Derek’s door and Peter answered

Peter runs the pad of his thumb over the cupid’s bow of Stiles’s upper lip. “You want to what, Stiles?”

Stiles has never been more glad of the blindfold, because he doesn’t think he could meet Peter’s gaze right now. Heat rises in his face. “I want to…”

No. He wants it, but he doesn’t want to _say_ it. He’s not even sure if it’s modesty, or misplaced pride, or the fact that a week ago he was a seventeen-year-old virgin and simply doesn’t have the vocabulary for this.

Peter’s voice is low. “Stiles.”

Stiles fidgets in his seat. He wills the words to come, but they won’t. Frustrated, he huffs out a breath. He reaches out and grips the edge of the table and pushes his chair away. Folds himself onto his knees on the floor, and shuffles around so that he’s facing Peter. Wets his lips with his tongue and opens his mouth.

Waits, heart beating fast.

The silent invitation is louder than anything Stiles could have managed with words.

He hears the scrape of Peter’s chair, the rustle of fabric, the rasp of a zipper. For a moment he’s overwhelmed. His heart is hammering so fast that he’s scared he’s going to faint, or hyperventilate, or tumble over the edge of his anxiety into a full-blown panic attack.

 _What the hell are you_ doing _?_

The thought comes out of nowhere, and it’s terrifying. It threatens to undermine everything Stiles has tried so hard to accept, to learn, over the past week. It’s a dangerous, and he hates it. He clenches his fingers into fists and fights the urge to reach up and tear the blindfold off. Why shouldn’t he, when it’s clearly not working?

He wants to vomit.

He wants to crawl outside his own skin.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, and nothing but a whine rises in his throat.  

 “Stiles.” Peter runs his fingers through his hair, and tugs it gently. “Breathe.”

His touch is like being doused in warmth. Stiles reaches for him like a drowning man, leaning his forehead against his legs, curling his fingers in the fabric of his jeans. “I’m sorry. Peter, I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” A claw scrapes over his scalp and sends a shiver down his spine. “Take a breath, Stiles, and tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t know!” He presses his face into Peter’s legs. “I don’t know!”

Peter crouches down in front of him and draws him into an embrace. He smells of warmth and comfort and chow mein. “Okay. It’s okay. You’re doing so well. You don’t need to push yourself.”

Stiles buries his face in the crook of Peter’s neck and tries to inhale the scent of his skin. He wishes his sense of smell was as acute as a wolf’s. He’s seen the way they lift their noses to taste the air.

“I’m not! I was, but now I’m not, and I don’t know why!” He hates how he sounds like a petulant child, but Peter shushes him gently as runs his hands up and down his back. It feels so good that Stiles can’t bring himself to be ashamed of the behavior that won him this comfort.

“Perhaps you weren’t ready to go outside today.”

Stiles burrows closer. He’d been fine, on the street and in the store. He’d been _fine._ He’d ignored that voice in the back of his head that wondered what they looked like from the outside. That wondered what they are.

“M-maybe,” he whispers.

Peter runs his fingers through his hair, and tightens his fist at the back of his head. “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Stiles.”

“Is that what I was doing?”

“I don’t know,” Peter answers quietly. “Is it?”

“Maybe.” Stiles exhales heavily.

“That’s okay,” Peter tells him, his tone soothing. “It’s okay to make mistakes. I know what I’m asking of you is difficult. It’s not easy to trust.” He slides a hand under Stiles’s shirt and counts the knobs of his spine with his thumb. “But you know where possession can take you, and you know I won’t take you back there.”

Stiles lets the tension bleed out of him. “Where will you take me?”

“Some place new, Stiles. Isn’t that what you want?”

Stiles shivers. “Yes.”

“Some place you’re stronger.”

“Because of you.”

Peter leans down and kisses the top of his head. “Yes. Because of me.”

Stiles has to trust that. Without it, he’s got nothing except his fear.

Stiles is tired of having nothing but that.

 

***

 

Stiles waits in the darkness for Peter to find him.

Sometimes Peter feeds him the chocolate-covered coffee beans. Sometimes he opens shallow channels in Stiles’s skin and chases the beads of blood with his tongue while Stiles shivers underneath him. Sometimes he reads aloud from a book. It’s in French. Stiles doesn’t understand the words, but he relaxes into the sound of Peter’s voice. He lets it carry him back and forth, on the tidal push and pull of its cadence. Peter’s voice paints pictures in Stiles’s head, even if he doesn’t understand the words. He listens anyway.

Sometimes, Stiles is afraid he’s falling, or that he’s already fallen so far that he’s sunk into an abyss he’ll never be able to escape. He thinks of his dad a lot, and of Scott. He thinks of Derek.

He doesn’t blame Peter. He can’t. Stiles lost the people he cared about long before Peter took him from Beacon Hills. He lost them the moment the nogitsune swirled around him like smoke, and then filled every part of him. The moment it had him, he’d already lost _everything_. The first thing he lost was himself.

Peter hasn’t stolen him. He hasn’t taken anything from Stiles that’s worth mourning. There was nothing inside him but empty space.

Sometimes, Peter takes those spaces and reshapes them, and fills them with the whispered promises that he can make Stiles whole again.

Sometimes Stiles wonders how long it will take.

Sometimes he doesn’t care if it’s forever.

And sometimes that idea terrifies him.

 

***

 

“It’s okay,” Stiles whispers to Peter in the night as he burns in his dreams. Stiles is curled on his side, facing Peter. He rests his hand against Peter’s cheek and waits for Peter’s eyes to close.

Tonight, they stay open. “Stiles?”

“You were having a dream.” Stiles moves to lift his hand away, but Peter catches his wrist. “A bad dream.”

Peter watches him silently in the darkness.

“You get them every night,” Stiles says, an accusatory note creeping into his voice however much he doesn’t want it there. “You said you’d stop my nightmares and you can’t even stop your own.”

Peter digs his fingers into Stiles’s wrist, pressing against the tendons like they’re the frets of a guitar. “Physician heal thyself?”

“No.” Stiles frowns, trying to detect a teasing tone in Peter’s words, but Peter’s voice is just gravelly with sleep. “God, I don’t mean it like that. I just mean, I haven’t had a nightmare since you, since you—”

 _Since you_ became _my nightmare._

Peter loosens his grip. He turns his head slightly and brushes his lips against Stiles’s palm. “I know you haven’t.”

Stiles swallows. “Do you remember what you dream about?”

“I can guess.”

“I dream about Allison,” Stiles says at last. “I dream about shoving that sword into Scott’s gut. I dream about the deputies who died at the station. I dream about the people at the hospital. I dream about my friends, and my dad. About the way they all looked at me when the nogitsune was inside me, and the way they look at me now.”

Peter releases his wrist. He reaches out and curls his hand over Stiles’s hip. “It’s sometimes easier to be hated than to be pitied.”

“Yes,” Stiles murmurs. His throat aches and his eyes sting. He’s unused to understanding. He stares at Peter, and he might be staring at a vision of his own future. A week ago he couldn’t think of the future at all, except in the vaguest of terms. And so often even those vague ideas of going somewhere else, of being someone else, were shut down by more immediate fantasies of firearms and pills and lengths of rope.

Peter shifts forward, tilts his jaw, and his lips are brushing against Stiles’s. The kiss is feather light, and Stiles thinks of butterfly wings and sunlight.

“Go to sleep, Stiles.”

For the first time in months, Stiles feels something that’s almost like hope. It unfurls in his chest like a tentative anemone. It feels precarious, and Stiles tries not to let it overwhelm him. He doesn’t want to kill it by needing it too much.

Peter kisses him again. His fear floods away, and that tiny flare of hope warms him as he drifts back into sleep.

 

***

 

 

Stiles is in no danger of overthinking it this time. 

He’s on his knees, on the living room floor in front of the couch. He’s naked, and blindfolded. Ribbons of blood curl down his back, his chest. He feels like he’s floating. There’s something buzzing underneath his skin, climbing up his spine.

His dick is hard.

His mouth is wet.

The rasp of Peter’s zipper makes him shiver. He swipes his tongue over his lower lip and juts his chin out. He lets his mouth hang open.

“So good.” Peter brushes a hand against his cheek, and Stiles leans into the touch. “Keep your hands behind your back.”

Stiles nods, stomach twisting in nervous anticipation.

“What does this mean for you?” Peter rubs his thumb along Stiles’s cheekbone.

Stiles swallows. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I always wanted to know, did the nogitsune put you on your knees?”

“N-no.” Stiles tilts his face blindly toward Peter. “It wouldn’t have…”

“Wouldn’t have submitted?”

“It fed off chaos,” Stiles murmurs. “This isn’t chaos.”

“No.” Peter steps closer. “This is order.”

Yes. This is the opposite of chaos. It’s the opposite of everything the nogistune wanted. The nogitsune was the eye at the center of a frenzied storm. It was the vortex. Stiles isn’t in the middle of the maelstrom now. Stiles is surrounded by calm. He’s on his knees for Peter. He’s exactly where he needs to be.

He wet his lips again.

Peter cards his fingers through his hair, then grips, and angles his head.

Stiles sucks in a sharp, shocked breath at the first feel of Peter’s cock against his cheek. The hot, heavy drag of the head against his cheek, and then his mouth, and for a second Stiles freezes, then he’s _tasting_ Peter. The flavor is bitter, sharp, against Stiles’s lower lip, and then, as he pushes inside, his tongue. A shudder runs through Stiles and his breath hitches.

“Good.” Peter tugs on his hair. “Open up for me.” 

Stiles opens his mouth wider. The taste is strange. Peter’s cock feels heavy as it presses against his tongue, and it’s bigger than he thought, and heavier. The head bumps against his palette, and Stiles fights down a burst of bright panic because there’s nowhere for it to go except down his throat, and Peter just keeps pushing in. Peter angles Stiles head just how he wants it, and Stiles clenches his fingers into fists behind his back, and gags when Peter’s cock hits the back of his throat.  

He doesn’t know what will happen first: if he’ll choke or vomit. Maybe he’ll do both.

“You can do this, Stiles.” Peter grips his hair tightly and tilts his head up. He pulls Stiles’s blindfold off. “Look at me. You can do this.”

Tears stream out of Stiles’s eyes, and he moans something that might be agreement.

“Good boy.”

Oh fuck. Stiles sucks in a breath while he still can, and then Peter’s cock is pushing into his throat. Peter keeps one hand fisted in Stiles’s hair, and moves his other one to his throat. He smiles as he curls his fingers around his neck, and Stiles realizes, dizzy and nauseous, that Peter’s feeling the way Stiles’s throat flutters and constricts reflexively around his cock.

“You have to learn this.” Peter holds his gaze. “You have to learn to take my cock any way I want.”

Stiles moans, vision swimming with tears.

Peter eases back slowly, and Stiles gags and pulls in a wet, choking breath.

“Okay,” Peter says, and thrusts slowly in again.

Stiles doesn’t want to say that it gets easier, but he gets used to it. It doesn’t feel good, exactly, but when his panic recedes, when he finally realizes that Peter’s not going to choke him to death, it becomes bearable. He finds himself rocking into Peter’s rhythm. He still gags, and his eyes and nose are streaming like he’s having an attack of hayfever, but he can do it.

Peter’s staring down at him like he’s more than a red-faced kid covered in tears and snot and spit. He’s looking at Stiles like he’s something beautiful, like he’s a revelation.

“So good, Stiles. So. Fucking. Good.” Each word is punctuated by a long, slow thrust.

Stiles’s eyes flutter half-closed. His moans again, and realizes that the erection he thought he’d lost when he first panicked is back. And it’s nothing to do with the physical sensations. It’s because of that look on Peter’s face. It’s because Peter is pleased with him. It’s because Stiles is submitting.

 God, he never would have known. Without Peter, he never would have known that he could feel like this.

“Fuck, you’re so good.” Peter picks up his pace, and Stiles struggles to stay passive, to stay open to whatever he wants. “Such a good little bitch for me.”

The word twists something inside Stiles’s gut, and he moans around Peter’s cock. Peter grips his hair more tightly, and fucks quickly into his face. Stiles gags on every thrust, a whine rising in his throat.

And then it’s done.

Before Stiles even has time to realize what’s happened, Peter has pulled out, and is coming all over Stiles’s face. Stiles coughs, eyes stinging, Peter’s cum in his eyelashes, on his nose and one cheek, sliding down over his swollen lips. He swipes his tongue out to clean his lips before he even knows what he’s doing. He swallows, his throat raw.

Peter kneels on the floor beside him. He takes the blindfold and bundles it up, and very carefully begins to wipe Stiles’s face clean.

“You’re so good. Such a good, clever boy.” He presses his mouth to Stiles’s forehead. “And practice will make perfect.”

Stiles nods. He’s not sure he can talk. He’s still trying to catch his breath.

“Go and wash your face, and then come back and, if you continue to be a good boy, we’ll see what we can do about this, hmm?” Peter reaches down and wraps his fingers around Stiles’s dick.

Stiles shudders.

Peter laughs, and nuzzles Stiles’s throat briefly. His teeth scrape against the tender flesh there. “Go on.”

Stiles climbs shakily to his feet and heads for the bathroom.

Behind him, he can still hear Peter laughing softly.

 

 

 

***

 

“Peter?” In the middle of the night, in the comfortable darkness of the bedroom, Stiles slips off his blindfold.

“Hmm?” Peter stretches, and the scant light from outside washes over the planes of his body.

“The other day, you said you’d take me somewhere new.”

Peter hums again, and traces a circle on Stiles’s hip with his finger.

Stiles chews his lip for a moment. “But you also said you’d take me back home when we were done.”

“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.” Peter’s smile is the same as the wolf’s.

“Aren’t they?”

“Stiles, when you’re stronger, when you’re not afraid of the darkness, when you’re really _mine_ , it won’t matter where you go.”

“Because I’ll be new.” Stiles wonders if it’s possible to mourn himself, and if he’s even worth mourning. Maybe he shouldn’t be focusing on the loss of his old self, but on the imminent birth of his new self. He should be looking ahead, not behind. Again he feels that familiar sensation of falling, and reaches out to splay his hand across Peter’s chest. Peter’s heartbeat steadies him. “Because you’re fixing me.”

“I am,” Peter murmurs. He puts his hand over Stiles’s. “Wolves aren’t the only creatures that need anchors.”

An anchor. Peter is his anchor.

Stiles shifts closer to him, and soaks up his warmth.

When he falls asleep again, Stiles dreams of water, and the darkness, and of sliding into an abyss and an anchor dragging him down.

It doesn’t feel exactly like a nightmare, but it leaves him feeling drawn and hollow-eyed when morning comes.

 

***

 

It’s a Thursday or a Friday when Peter takes him out again. First they shop for clothes for Stiles. Jeans and tees and underwear. It’s not extravagant, but it’s enough to makes Stiles wonder how long Peter intends to keep him. The thought makes him uneasy in ways he can’t quite articulate. He doesn’t…he doesn’t _mind_ if it’s a long time, but he wants to know.

Being out in public, being surrounded by people, adds another layer of anxiety that makes his skin crawl. He knows he won’t feel secure until he’s back at the apartment in The Mission, on his knees by Peter’s side, his blindfold tied securely.

His heartbeat ratchets up so fast when they walk past two police officers outside Macy’s that Peter has to take him aside and talk him down.

“What if my dad’s looking for me?”

“Well, of course he’s looking.” Peter squeezes his hand.

Again, Stiles wishes they were in the apartment, where it doesn’t matter if Peter kisses him or cuts him with his claws. It’s not fair. Peter’s made him need those things, and now he’s taken him out in public where he can’t get them.

“Peter.” He huffs in frustration. “My dad’s the sheriff! He could have a BOLO out on you!”

Peter smiles. “This might be one of the very, very few things you haven’t thought all the way through, Stiles. Now, I want you to take a breath and tell me all the reasons your father _wouldn’t_ have done that.”

Stiles leans back against the wall of Macy’s and stares at the passing pedestrian traffic. “Because I told him I wanted to go with you?”

Peter smirks.

Okay, no, because his dad would move mountains to get to Stiles if he even thought for a second that he was being manipulated. And of course he’s being manipulated. He has been from the start. It also happens to be exactly what he needs.

Doesn’t it?

Stiles shakes his head to clear it. “Okay, so he would _want_ to find me, despite what I told him, because it’s _you_.” Peter’s smile grows. “But… but he not going to go through official channels, because it’s too dangerous. Because it’s you.”

“Clever.”

Stiles relaxes. “Because he won’t send innocent cops up against you knowing that they wouldn’t stand a chance, and he can’t tell them about werewolves and wolfsbane bullets without tearing this whole supernatural thing wide open. Or looking like a crazy fuck.”

Peter’s smirk grows.

“But he’ll still be looking,” Stiles says. “Him, and Scott. And Derek.”

“Yes.”

The idea scares him, because what if they find him and Peter? Stiles has been the cause of enough bloodshed. He doesn’t need any more on his conscience.

“Peter?” He grips Peter’s hand tightly. “Can I call him?”

Peter sighs. “Stiles…”

“Please?” He’s desperate to hear his dad’s voice, now he’s allowed himself the idea that it might be possible.

Peter’s eyes darken with concern. “I think it’s a mistake.”

Stiles is seized with childish hope, because that wasn’t a denial.

Peter sighs again. “I’ll think about it. Let’s finish our shopping first.”

Stiles can’t stop the grin from spreading over his face.

 

***

 

Two hours later Stiles is sitting on a bench in Golden Gate Park with a prepaid cellphone—prepaid with a fake credit card, presumably—in his hands. Peter is sitting beside him, sunglasses on, sipping a smoothie.

Stiles’s dials his dad’s number.

“Stilinski.”

“Dad, it’s me.”

“Stiles!” His dad’s voice cracks. “Jesus, kid, where the hell are you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He doubts his dad would believe it anyway. He’s sitting in a beautiful park on a sunny day, watching Peter Hale accidentally drip pink fruit smoothie on his too-tight v-neck. This isn’t the scenario his dad is picturing. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m okay. Peter’s looking after me.”

“Stiles…”

Stiles rolls his eyes at his dad’s tone. God, he should have known his dad wouldn’t believe him. It’s been so long since his dad has trusted anything that came out of his mouth, why should now be any different? “I’m _okay_. I promise. But I need to know that you won’t come looking for me.”

“I will _always_ come looking for you. You’re my son.”

“Dad.” Stiles huffs in frustration. “ _Listen_. Peter says he going to bring me home, and I believe that. He hasn’t lied to me, not once, okay? So you and Scott and Derek just need to back the fuck off!” 

The silence on the other end of the line stings more than anything his dad could say.

“Shit.” Stiles closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” His dad’s voice shakes. “Whatever…whatever’s going on in your head right now, don’t apologize for it.”

It’s Peter’s turn to roll his eyes.

“Just tell me again that you’re okay.”

“I am,” Stiles says. He wrinkles his nose. “Are you?”

“I’ve been better, kid.”

Stiles’s stomach knots, and he knows that calling was a mistake. He knows how this will end: another tearful fucking meltdown in Peter’s arms. Another fraught night of uncertainty and anxiety and fear, that was so, so unnecessary. “Don’t, um, don’t worry about me.”

“Oh, kid…”

Stiles hates the note of pity in those words. “Dad. I’m _okay_.”

Peter slurps his smoothie.

“I have to go now.” Stiles stares out over the park. He’s seen more of San Francisco with Peter than he ever did with his parents, and Peter’s basically keeping him blindfolded in an apartment. “I don’t know when I’ll call again. Bye.”

He ends the call without giving his dad time to reply, and shoves the phone in Peter’s direction. Peter takes it without saying anything.

Stiles shuts his mouth until he can’t stand the silence any longer. He’s too frustrated with himself to ignore it. “So, you were right. Calling him was a mistake.”

Peter sets his smoothie down. “Those are allowed.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. Blindness brings clarity. “I wish you didn’t let me leave the apartment.”

Peter is silent for a moment. Then he asks, “Why?”

Stiles keeps his eyes shut. “Because I’m not scared there, when there’s nobody else but you.”

“Open your eyes, Stiles.” Peter takes his hand.

Stiles gazes at him and chews his bottom lip nervously.

“I’m the only one here.” Peter lifts his free hand to Stiles’s temple and taps his fingers gently. His gaze never falters. “And in here.”

Stiles takes a breath and holds it, and waits until his heart stops racing.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

There is no other word he’d rather say to Peter than that one. 

There’s no other word that even exists in this new universe where it’s only him and Peter, and no one else.

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

Just like you and I were meant to be forever

-       from “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench

 

 

It’s like a twisted sort of honeymoon.

It’s picnics on the living room floor, and shared baths and watching dumb movies and staying in bed fucking long after the sun’s come up.

It’s losing more blood than Stiles even knew he had in his body.

It’s passing out more than once, and coming slowly back into dazed consciousness with Peter stroking his hair. It’s waking up in the bath, the tub underneath him slick with their mingled fluids. It’s no longer being afraid, each time he slips into unconsciousness, that this will be the last time.

The darkness doesn’t scare him anymore. Peter’s always there with him, and always there when he wakes up again.

Stiles wants it to last forever, but honeymoons never do.

 

***

 

Stiles is curled up in the window seat, watching the traffic pass on the street below. His blindfold is knotted loosely around his left wrist. Peter hasn’t made him wear it in days, but Stiles still likes to keep it with him. It’s not about the function of the blindfold anymore. It’s about feeling Peter’s authority, feeling his presence, by proxy. The blindfold has become a talisman. Stiles has made it a sacred object. Sometimes he twists it tighter around his wrist to feel the pressure of it against his skin. Sometimes he ties it as tight as a tourniquet and restricts the circulation until his hand is throbbing. He can feel the blood swelling underneath his skin when he does it, and imagines a vivid bright spray of it waiting to burst forth at the whisper of Peter’s claws.

Outside it’s overcast, and drizzling a little. It was sunny yesterday, but the weather in San Francisco is changeable. It’s cool enough that Stiles is wearing clothes today: sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. That, and he doesn’t want to give the neighbors across the street a show. He’s not sure they’d see anything today, though. The window is speckled with tiny droplets of water. Stiles watches as they grow heavy enough to slip down the glass, as some slide around one another, as others touch and coalesce. Stiles lets them hypnotize him gently.

The brush of Peter’s fingers on his cheek brings him back with a smile. “Hey.”

Peter leans down and presses his lips to his temple. “Pasta for dinner?”

“Mmm.”

“And maybe some more of that merlot.”

“That’s the red one, right?” Stiles teases.

Peter huffs a warm breath of laughter against Stiles cheek. “I’ll teach you to refine your palate if it’s the last thing I do.”

Stiles curls toward him.

Peter sits down beside him and cards his fingers thorough his hair. He hooks his fingers under the hinge of Stiles’s jaw and tilts his head upward to expose his throat. Peter ducks his head to press his mouth against Stiles’s jugular. Stiles closes his eyes and shivers when he feels the scrape of fangs. He half expects a bite, and the softness of the kiss takes him by surprise.

“I think it’s almost time to take you home again, Stiles,” Peter murmurs against his throat.

Stiles’s heartbeat races. “Wh-what?”

Peter leans back. He holds his gaze. “To Beacon Hills. I think you’re ready.”

“But why?” Stiles swallows. “I like it here. Why can’t we stay here?”

Peter’s mouth quirks up in a regretful smile. “Because this isn’t my territory, Stiles. It’s not my home, and it’s not yours either.”

Stiles runs his fingers along the cushion of the window seat. _Home._ He’s not sure what to think about the word. There was a time in his life when it would have meant warmth and comfort and familiarity, a time when the word would have fit him like his favorite old hoodie, but now he feels nothing for it. Thoughts of his house, of school, of his friends and his dad…it’s as though the memories don’t belong to him anymore, as though they’ve been filtered through so many different versions of himself that he feels no sense of ownership for them. He knows what they once meant—he knows what emotional response they should evoke in him—but he doesn’t feel anything.

Anything except worry.

He curls his fingers in Peter’s shirt. “Peter, Derek and Scott are gonna be so mad. And my dad, too.”

“Mmm.” Peter gathers Stiles’s hands up and raises them to his mouth. Kisses his trembling fingers. “They’ll be mad at me, sweetheart, not at you.”

Warmth unfurls in Stiles’s stomach at the endearment. It’s not the first time his strange dependence on Peter—the need to hold him in the center of his consciousness, always, the need to make him the point around which Stiles’s universe revolves—has felt like something more. Sometimes Stiles feels the edges of his need soften a little toward something different. Something affectionate. It used to exist only in the middle of the night as he soothed Peter out of his nightmares, but he feels it more and more in their daily interactions. 

He doesn’t just need Peter on that same base level as hunger or thirst. He wants him, too. He wants to hear him hum in the kitchen as he makes dinner. He wants to hear him read aloud in French. He wants to be in the same room as him, just to be soothed by his presence. It’s not just instinct anymore. It’s not just submission to the predator. It’s operating on a higher function now. It’s real.

“I don’t want them to hurt you,” he says, and a voice in the back of head whispers: _Why not?_

“They won’t,” Peter says, and shows him a smile.

“They _will_!” Stiles wrenches his hands from Peter’s grasp and brackets his face with them. Peter’s stubble scratches his palms. “Derek ripped your throat out once!”

“Only with your help, Stiles, and he doesn’t have that this time.”

Stiles huffs out something that’s between a laugh and an exasperated sigh. “Peter, it’s dangerous.”

“Yes.” Peter’s smile fades until his expression is serious again. “It’s dangerous, but it’s necessary.”

“Why?” Stiles’s eyes prick with tears. “Why can’t we stay here?”

He’s happy here. He’s sure he is. Going back to Beacon Hills with ruin everything. His dad and Scott and Derek and Lydia will take everything that’s happened here and force him to look at it. Force him to see it through their eyes. Stiles is terrified his happiness won’t take that kind of scrutiny.

His happiness is like an old photographic negative. It was created in the darkness and the quiet. Light and rough handling will destroy it.

“Because they need to see,” Peter murmurs. He curls a hand behind Stiles’s neck and leans in close. “They need to know you’re mine now, and they can’t take you away from me.”

“I am,” Stiles whispers. They kiss, and it tastes like tears. “I am yours.” Misery wells up in him, and he sobs harder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to go.” 

“But I need you with me,” Peter tells him. “I need you to show them how strong I’ve made you, hmm?”

Stiles closes his eyes and nods. Buries his face in Peter’s neck and sobs again. “I’m scared. I’m scared they’ll ruin everything and take me away from you.”

“Nobody,” Peter says, his voice low, almost a growl. “Nobody is going to take you away from me, Stiles.”

Stiles shivers at the tone of his voice. “Yes. Please.” He tugs Peter closer, then pushes him away. Straddles him. “Please. Please.”

Peter’s eyes are dark. He smiles again. “Show me how much you want me, sweetheart.”

Stiles moans. Peter’s need, shining in his eyes, ignites his own. He fumbles with the buttons on Peter’s shirt, his shaking, jerking fingers refusing to work quickly. It takes forever to reveal Peter’s skin to his gaze, and to his mouth. He kisses Peter’s throat, then his collarbone. Makes a hot, wet trail of kisses across his chest. Flicks his tongue against Peter’s nipple, just to hear his low, lust-filled growl.

“Get your fucking clothes off. Now.”

Stiles scrambles to his feet, and pulls his shirt over his head. Shucks his sweatpants down. Watches with a heated gaze as Peter stands and divests himself of his shirt and pants.

“I want to fuck you against the window.” Peter’s eyes flash. The wolf is just below the surface, and Stiles wants to tease it out.

He climbs back onto the window seat, on his knees. Widens his stance as far as he can, until his thighs burn, and leans forward. He splays his hands up against the rain-speckled window. Stares at the house across the street. He thinks there might be someone in the window, but he can’t tell. He imagines there is, and imagines they’re staring back at him.

“Good boy.” Peter’s breath is hot against the back of his throat. “Such a good little bitch for your wolf.”

“Bite me,” Stiles groans, and his hips jerk forward when Peter scrapes his fangs against his throat. “Oh, fuck.”

Peter’s voice is distorted by his fangs, and muffled by Stiles’s skin. “If I bit you here, you’d bleed out.”

“Yes.” Stiles tilts his head so that his jugular is more exposed. He’s not afraid. He shudders when Peter slides his hands around his narrow hips and claws dance across his abdomen. “I want you in me, please. Please fuck me, Peter.”

He can feel Peter’s cock, hot and thick, against the small of his back. He tries to shift, to get it closer to where he needs it, but Peter holds him still. One hand stays on his abdomen. The other moves to Stiles back.

A claw makes a shallow cut along his spine, and Stiles hisses. His dick is so hard it’s almost painful. Blood slides down his back, into the cleft of his ass, and shit… oh _shit_. Peter’s thumb rubs the blood around his hole until it’s wet and slick.

It’s sick and twisted on so many levels, but Stiles is too turned on to give a fuck.

“Yeah,” he gasps, his hips moving back and forth, his dick needing friction it’s just not getting. “Fuck me, Peter, please.”

It hurts.

Stiles doesn’t care. He splays his fingers against the window, presses his forehead against it. Bites his lip until it bleeds too, and blood runs down his chin. Peter grunts as he forces the head of his cock inside him, and Stiles rides every sharp crest of pain. He’ll immolate himself on Peter Hale’s cock. It’s right to find his peace, his place, in blood and pain and possession. It’s not just what he deserves, it’s who he is.

“Fuck me,” he grinds out, pushing back to meet Peter’s long, slow thrust into him.

Peter reaches up and grips his hair, wrenches his head sideways and sucks the blood off his bottom lip. “Little whore. _My_ little whore.”

“Yours,” Stiles agrees, warmth flooding through him. He keeps his fingers on the window, even though he wants nothing more than to jerk himself off while Peter fucks him. He clenches around Peter’s cock, rocks into his thrusts, and whines out his pleasure instead. He’s desperate to show Peter how much he loves this (how much he loves _him_?) now that he knows they’ll be leaving soon. He needs this moment to be perfect.

He needs Peter to memorialize it in a web of scars across his flesh.

Peter growls in his ear, and Stiles shudders.

Each thrust, slick with blood, jerks Stiles forward. His knees are rubbed red by the cushion of the window seat. His fingers, damp with sweat, slide against the window. The glass is cool against his cheek when Peter pushes his face against it.

A spike of panic rises in him when he glances down at the street and sees people walking by. If any of them looked up… Then Peter reaches around and folds his fingers around Stiles’s aching dick, and the panic transforms into arousal.

Let them see.

Let the whole world see.

Stiles wants the universe to know that he’s Peter’s boy, his bitch, his whore. He is owned by the wolf, and it’s right and good and he’s unafraid.

He wants to keep this feeling forever.

It won’t. He knows it won’t. It moves back and forth like the tide, the push and the pull, unending. Right now his courage floods him, fills up every corner of him, every space inside, but in hours, in days, it will drain away again and Stiles won’t be able to stop it.

“God, Peter,” he moans as Peter’s cock pegs his prostate.

Peter swipes a bloody thumb over the head of Stiles’s dick. Hot. Wet. A frisson of electric pleasure buzzes up Stiles’s spine. His dick throbs and his balls draw up and tighten.

“I’m close,” he moans, shivering, eyes squeezed shut. The pressure inside him winds tighter and tighter, and he’s right on the edge. “God, Peter, _please_.”

“Do it, Stiles,” Peter growls. “ _Come_.”

Stiles jerks his hips, thrusting into Peter’s fist, and then he’s coming, breath rasping wetly, muscles spasming, his shuddering body slick with sweat and blood and cum. Coughing, shivering, he lets the window take his weight and gazes though half-closed eyes at the window across the street as Peter continues to fuck into him.

Stiles is over-sensitized now; each thrust of Peter’s is almost too much to bear, and each pushes a strangled sound out of Stiles’s throat. He wants Peter to finish, but at the same time he wants him closer, deeper.

“Peter,” he moans, and repeats it until the name loses all meaning, and becomes a murmured litany: _Peter Peter Peter_. Everything Stiles has ever wanted, ever needed, is carried in that name that has transformed into a hoarse, whispered prayer of petition and thanksgiving.

Peter grips Stiles’s hips tightly as he comes, grunting and growling like the animal he is. He pulls out almost immediately, and hooks a thumb into Stiles’s hole to keep it from closing up. Stiles burns with embarrassment to know that Peter’s watching his cum leak out of him.

“Such a messy, dirty boy.”

Stiles squirms.

“So good for me,” Peter murmurs. He presses his mouth to the curve of Stiles’s spine. “So perfect.”

Warmth steals over Stiles.

He doesn’t have to be ashamed. Not when Peter worships Stiles too, in his own way.

 

***

 

“You need me,” Stiles whispers to Peter in the night. He smooths his hair back. “You need me too.”

“Matty,” Peter says, his mouth twisting as he chokes on remembered smoke.

Stiles presses a kiss to his collarbone.

“Laura?” Peter’s voice cracks on her name.

There was a time when Stiles couldn’t understand why Derek had let Peter be in his pack. He wasn’t sure if it was forgiveness, or if it was a form of torture for both of them. Derek probably had nightmares too. Then, after the nogitsune he’d wondered the same thing: why did Scott let Stiles stay in the pack? He didn’t think Scott had it in him for it to be a punishment but, in a way, that’s exactly what it felt like.

 _Here’s what you ruined. Here are the people you hurt. Count the ones missing. Look._ Look. _Murderer._

Peter knows that same hell.

Stiles reaches across him and takes his hand. Peter clasps tightly, his claws breaking the skin on the back of Stiles’s hand. Stiles sucks in a sharp breath and rides the wave of pleasure that follows the pain.

“Peter,” he whispers. “Peter, it’s not happening now.”

There’s a moment of stillness as though the night is holding its breath, and then Peter’s claws retract, his grip loosens on Stiles’s hand and he tilts his head back and sniffs as he comes awake. “Stiles?”

“My blood totally woke you up,” Stiles murmurs. “You’re like a great white shark or something.”

“Something like a wolf?” Peter asks, his voice thick with sleep and tempered with amusement.

Stiles grins. “Yeah, that works too.”

Peter is silent for so long that Stiles thinks he’s dozed off again. Then he lifts Stiles’s hand to his mouth and kisses the blood away. “Don’t think that I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“That we chase away each other’s nightmares.”

“Oh.” Stiles wishes he could read Peter’s expression better in the darkness.

“It doesn’t make me weak.”

“I know.” Stiles feels his heart skip a beat. It’s not a lie, but it makes him anxious when he doesn’t immediately understand what response Peter wants from him. It throws him straight back to that first night in Derek’s loft, and he hates that it does. It shouldn’t. He trusts Peter. He _loves_ Peter.

“It doesn’t make you weak either,” Peter tells him.

There’s a buzzing in Stiles’s head, as though he’s on the brink of understanding, but he can’t quite get it. Like staring at some frustrating mathematical formula in a textbook, and knowing that it’s not impossible since Lydia’s already figured it out, but when thinking about it only pushes the answer further away.

“You’re strong,” Peter says.

Stiles doesn’t feel strong. “I’m co-dependent. Without you, I’d crumble.”

Peter twists his wrist gently and presses a kiss to the palm of his hand. His breath is hot. “So don’t ever be without me.”

“Is it that easy?” God, he wants it to be. But he knows it won’t be, it _can’t_ be. Because his dad loves him, and Scott loves him, and Derek… Stiles never had the chance, or the courage, to find out how Derek feels about him, but he knows one thing: Derek won’t back down from a fight, even if he thinks he’s going to lose. Even if he _knows_ he’s going to lose. Derek isn’t just going to talk this out with Peter. Long after this has stopped being about Stiles, it will be about pride, and vengeance, and hierarchy and pack.

“It’s exactly as easy as we want it to be,” Peter says.

Stiles wonders if this is how it feels to be in control. It’s been so long he doesn’t remember. And he’s not sure he ever felt this way. Maybe he was never this confident. Or a sociopath.

“You’re over-thinking it.” Peter releases his hand and rolls onto his side. Hooks a leg between Stiles’s.

Stiles luxuriates in Peter’s warmth, in the weight of his body.

“Do you trust that I know what I’m doing, Stiles?”

“I want to.” Stiles swallows. “I want to, but I’m so scared that you’re wrong.”

“Don’t be scared.” Peter nuzzles his throat. “I’ve had a taste of you now. I’ve left my claw marks on your skin. They can’t take you away from me.”

“Because you won’t let them,” Stiles murmurs, closing his eyes.

“No, sweetheart,” Peter says. “Because _you_ won’t.”

 

***

 

Stiles stares at his face in the bathroom mirror. It’s at once familiar and unfamiliar, as though a stranger wears it as a mask even now. He recognizes the pale skin, the constellation of moles, the dark eyes, the snub nose, the wide mouth. He recognizes them, but he doesn’t feel at all connected to them. The nogitsune borrowed his face to wear that time, and somehow stretched it all out of shape so it doesn’t fit properly anymore. His face, his body, his _soul_ , feel used, unclean. The Stiles who once inhabited him, who twisted that expressive mouth into grins and grimaces, who lit up those dark eyes with delight, isn’t around to animate his expressions anymore. This new Stiles is a different creature. He’s quieter, more wary. He’s contained. He cries more than he laughs.

Stiles glances away from his reflection as Peter leans in the doorway. “Does it matter to you that I’m not the same person I was?”

“No.” Peter holds his gaze. “Does it matter to you?”

“I don’t know. The Stiles you wanted first of all, that’s not me anymore.”

“I know that.” Peter’s mouth quirks in a smile. “I wanted to fuck that smart-mouthed kid into submission. You, I want to help.”

Stiles wondered when he changed. He thought it was with the nogitsune, but there’d been a flash of that smart-mouthed kid the night at Derek’s loft. Enough of him left for Peter to fuck into submission, anyway. “You are helping.”

Peter’s smile grows. “I’m going to go and pick up some dinner. Is there anything in particular you want?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? We’ll be leaving in the morning. How about something from that taqueria you like?”

Stiles’s stomach clenches, and he gives a jerky nod. “Okay.”

He doesn’t want to go, but he has to trust that Peter knows what he’s doing. All that talk of territory and home… Stiles suspects it’s more than that. It has to be more than that. Maybe Peter’s plotting something. Peter usually is. Maybe he’s coveting the power of the Nemeton, or the power of the alpha.

Stiles stares at himself in the mirror again, and searches for something familiar in his eyes.

_If Peter asked you to betray Scott, would you do it?_

Stiles waits a long time for an answer, but one doesn’t come.

 

***

 

His first few days in the apartment, Stiles didn’t see a thing. Now, the blindfold tied around his wrist, he fills his vision with the tiny details of the place, afraid that when he’s gone he’ll forget. He’s afraid that the place will seem as insubstantial as a dream, and it’ll fade like mist.

He runs his fingers along the walls.

He reads all the titles on the spines of the books on the shelves.

He sits on the stairs that lead up from the front door.

He counts the tiles on the bathroom floor.

He rattles the lid on the tank of the toilet.

He traces out the pattern on the Turkish carpet in the living room.

He smells the pillows on the bed he shared with Peter.

He sits at the table in the kitchen and puts his head in his hands.

He doesn’t cry, but the tears are right there, ready to fall.

Peter finds him in the kitchen, and sighs. “Stiles.”

Stiles lifts his head.

Peter’s expression hovers somewhere between fond and exasperated. He sets the takeout bags on the table. “Are we going to eat this before it gets cold?”

Stiles knows Peter can see the panic crawling just under his skin. Peter can read him like a book. Nobody else can, or ever could. Even Scott, who knew him best in the world, more often than not just laughed and shook his head at the crazy things Stiles did. Stiles was already a thing apart, long before the nogitsune. It’s probably why it chose him. So clever, so well camouflaged by noise and motion, and more vulnerable than anyone knew.

“Stiles?”

He manages a nod.

“Good.” Peter fetches plates and cutlery from the draining rack and puts them on the table.

They eat in silence.

The food is good. Stiles knows it objectively, even though he’s pretty sure he can’t taste a thing right now.

He doesn’t want to leave.

“These tacos are excellent,” Peter says.

“Yeah,” Stiles replies, hardly louder than a whisper. He feels like a little kid, with some worried adult trying to work him out of his bad mood. He hates that he’s making Peter indulge him like this, but he knows it’s also pointless to try and fake any enthusiasm for the food.

They finish the meal in silence, and Peter takes the dishes they’ve used to the sink. Stiles stares at the wall and thinks about offering to wash the dishes. Instead he unpicks the knot of the scarf wrapped around his wrist until it comes free. He ties it over his eyes.

“No.” Peter is standing behind him. He sighs, and puts his hands on Stiles’s shoulders. Runs a thumb along the back of his neck. “You don’t need this now, Stiles.”

Stiles hunches his shoulders over and tries to vanish into the narrow space in between them.

Peter slips the blindfold off and kisses the top of his head. “Come with me.”

The legs of the chair scrape against the floor as Stiles stands. He pushes the chair back in and turns around to step into Peter’s embrace. Peter takes him by the hand and pulls him down the hallway and into the bedroom. He opens the large closet there. There is an old beveled-edge mirror screwed to the inside of the door.

Peter positions Stiles in front of it, and reaches for the hem of his shirt. He pulls the shirt up over Stiles’s head, and drops it onto the floor.

“Look.”

Stiles stares at his pale chest, cross-hatched now with the marks made by Peter’s claws. Some are fresh. Some are scabbed over. Some are already thin, pink scars. Peter splays his hands on his abdomen, his blunt fingers transforming into claws as Stiles watches.

“What do you see?” he asks, bowing his head to press a warm kiss to the side of Stiles’s neck.

“Scars,” Stiles says. “Cuts.”

Peter lifts his head and meets his gaze in the mirror. “And what do they mean?”

Stiles swallows. “That you own me?”

“Don’t say it like a question, sweetheart.”

“That you own me,” Stiles repeats, feeling some of his tension bleed away.

“I own you, and I’m keeping you.”

Stiles thrums with pleasure that’s deeper than anything sexual. It buzzes under his skin. It’s warm, and it fills him. He studies his scars, his scabs, his still-open cuts, and sighs. Each one of them is the shadow of Peter’s stinging touch upon his skin. Each one of them is a signature.

It’s not enough.

Stiles wants Peter’s name written on him in fucking _neon_.

“All of them…” Stiles bites his lip for a moment. Apart from the scars on his forearms, every mark Peter has inflicted can be hidden under his clothes. He slides a hand down to Peter’s hand and lifts it. Holds it up to his cheek, snagging the tip of the claw against his skin. He holds Peter’s gaze. “Please.”

“Why?”

Stiles draws in a shuddering breath. “These ones, these others, they’re for us. They’re for you and me to look at, to remember. You need to do one for _them_ , so they know, just from looking, who I belong to. You need to make them _know_!” The vehemence in his tone takes him by surprise.

Peter’s eyes are dark. They shine with pleasure. “Stiles,” he breathes, the word sounding as holy as a prayer.

“Do it,” Stiles says.

“You surpass every expectation I ever had,” Peter says, his voice thick and low.

“I love you,” Stiles whispers.

“I love you too,” Peter says, and slices Stiles’s cheek open.

 

***

 

As the car winds its way east, away from the coast, the day grows darker. Stiles clenches his fingers into fists and tries not to panic. It starts to rain as they pass through Sacramento, and by the time they’re approaching Beacon Hills it’s pouring down. It the sort of rain that scours the ground and digs gouges out of the dirt. It’s the sort of rain that destroys new grass instead of nurturing it. Stiles can hardly see a thing out the windshield. Off the interstate, the road winds and twists its way toward Beacon Hills. Each bend brings them closer to home.

Closer to Stiles’s dad, and to Scott, and to Derek.

Closer to a new nightmare.

Stiles watches the wiper blades swish back and forth across the windshield, and tries to stop his hands from shaking. His cheek throbs with his heartbeat. 

Peter loves him.

Stiles wants to be worthy of that.

Peter told him he was strong.

Whatever happens next, Stiles wants to prove it.

 


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

 

 

If I can’t have you, no-one can

\- from “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench

 

 

 

Beacon Hills.

Stiles doesn’t know what to feel as they drive through the town. He was born in this town. He grew up in this town. He knows every inch of it: from Main Street, to the high school, to the diner, to the Preserve, to the miles and miles of sidewalk linking them that Stiles has walked so often he knows each crack.

He tells himself that this place, those memories belong to a different Stiles, the Stiles that existed before the nogitsune, the Stiles that is dead now. Except dissociation will only get him so far, he knows. Sooner or later he’s going to be forced to reconcile himself with his past, because it was never a clean break like he wanted to imagine. Not on their end. His dad, Scott, Derek; they haven’t let the old Stiles go. They should have, but they haven’t.

Stiles eats his last peanut butter cup. This one wasn’t from the organic grocery place in the Mission; this one was Reese’s, from the gas station out on the highway. Peter had bought him four, and smiled at him indulgently as he’d eaten them, fingers sticky with chocolate. They’d settled Stiles’s nerves for a little while, but now, as Peter drives past the grocery store that Stiles shops at every week— _had_ shopped at—he feels his anxiety rising again.

He crumples his Reese’s packet in one hand, and slips his other hand into the pocket of his jeans. Peter had bought him a present at the gas station too, a mysterious thin package wrapped in red paper. He’d told Stiles not to open it yet.

“What is it?” Stiles had asked.

“Don’t you even worry about that now, sweetheart.” Peter had grinned, slipping the packet into Stiles’s pocket, and then produced the small stack of peanut butter cups. “Now, can I distract you with these?”

He could, and he had.

Now Stiles sinks back further into his seat and tries to ignore his roiling gut. He wants to ask Peter what he’s expecting, but he knows that’s not how this thing works. Peter will tell him what he thinks is necessary. Stiles only has to trust. It’s both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world.

He lifts his fingers to feel the cut on his cheek. It’s not bleeding anymore, but the wound is still hot. It still throbs a little. Stiles likes the reminder of it when he can’t see it.

He stares out the window as Peter steers them along familiar streets. They’re heading downtown, passing the shops and restaurants that Stiles knows, and driving toward what was once the center of industry in Beacon Hills, back when the only industry was lumber. The Jungle is in this neighborhood. So is Derek’s loft.

“Peter, where do you live?”

He’d asked this before, months ago now, and Peter had said something about an interconnected network of tunnels. He’d played on Stiles’s idea that he was a Bond supervillain or something, before finally admitting he had an apartment across town. Stiles hadn’t asked for any more details that day, annoyed that Peter had made fun of him, and too easily distracted by whatever else was going on.

“I live in Hilltop Place, over on Pine.”

“Oh.” Those apartments are new and, by Beacon Hills standards, expensive. Somehow Stiles has always imagined Peter doing the same as Derek: skulking around some half-ruined or abandoned property and claiming it as his own. He should have known, after San Francisco, that Peter does things differently. He should have known long before San Francisco, if he’d been paying attention. “Those are nice.”

“It’s adequate,” Peter says, tapping his fingers on the top of the steering wheel. “Apartment 6.”

Stiles catches his gaze.

Peter’s mouth curves in a slight smile.

“Aren’t you taking me there yourself?” Stiles asks, his heart pounding faster.

Peter reaches across and rubs his thigh. “Do you trust me, sweetheart?”

There’s a part of Stiles that is afraid this will end with Peter laughing in his face; a part of Stiles that, now he’s back in Beacon Hills, can’t help remembering what Peter was like here, and wondering if he’ll revert to type. There’s another part of him that believes that what they have is so profound that this is the first time he’s really known Peter, the true Peter. And there’s a final part of him, still so small and so scared, that knows it doesn’t matter what he thinks: he’s powerless.

Stiles holds Peter’s ice-blue gaze. His skin prickles. His cheek throbs.

Does he trust Peter Hale?

“Yes,” he whispers.

Both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world.

 

 

***

 

Derek’s loft is empty when Peter rolls open the door.

“He gave you a key?” Stiles asks, his heart thumping.

“Well, I _have_ a key,” Peter says, his self-satisfied smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. He takes Stiles by the hand and tugs him over the threshold.

For just a second, Stiles fights nausea.

For just a second he’s that wailing, struggling kid again, bent over the couch and getting—

Getting—

He can’t even say it in his head. Can’t make it real by calling it forth by its name, like some ancient kind of magic, or a demon.

He squeezes Peter’s hand tightly and forces himself to turn his head and look.

The old couch is gone. It’s been replaced by an ugly square thing that somehow makes Derek’s loft look even less inviting. Stiles stares, and hears his own wails and whimpers, and the squeak of his sweaty skin over the leather of the old couch. He shivers as Peter slides his hand under the back of his shirt and runs his fingertips up the curve of his spine. He wonders if he should be panicking, but he’s not. He wonders if this strange disconnect is a blessing, or a symptom of something much more frightening.

He draws a deep breath and holds it until his anxiety is no longer spiking. “Peter, what’s going to happen now?”

Peter’s gaze is intent. Stiles wants to drown in it. “Don’t be scared.”

Stiles turns into his embrace. He presses his face against Peter’s throat, craving that close contact, that comfort. “I’m trying. Fuck, I’m _trying_.”

Peter rubs his back. “I know you are, sweetheart. That’s all I ask.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” Stiles says, his voice cracking.

“You won’t.” Peter kisses the top of his head “Sweetheart, that’s never going to happen. We’re stronger than they are, remember?”

Tears clump Stiles’s lashes. “Yeah.”

“Good boy.” Peter kisses him again. “Good boy.”

Slowly, Peter loosens the cage of his arms and eases Stiles out of it.

“Okay,” he says, smoothing Stiles’s hair and then holding his palm against his cheek, against the cut on his face. “I know you can do this.”

Stiles holds his gaze and nods.

“I love you,” Peter says, then throws back his head and _howls_.

The noise echoes in the loft, rising to the vaulted ceiling, reverberating. It’s an ancient sound, something primeval, and it raises the hair on the back of Stiles’s neck and steals his breath away.

The whole world can hear Peter’s howl, probably.

Derek and Scott definitely will.

 

***

 

Stiles is holding Peter’s hand—tapping his fingertips along the tops of Peter’s claws—when the door to the loft is wrenched open.

Derek looks like something wrathful. He’s half-shifted, his eyes blazing, his fangs out. He has never looked more terrifying to Stiles. His gaze slides over Stiles, and stops on Peter. It narrows, and he growls.

“Careful, nephew,” Peter says, his voice calm. He folds his hand around the back of Stiles’s neck. “This isn’t your fight.”

Derek’s flexes his fingers, claws sprouting, striding into the loft. “You _hurt_ him.”

Peter tightens his grip, his claws digging into Stiles’s neck. Stiles smells blood when Peter’s claws break the skin, but he doesn’t flinch.

Derek lifts his nose, and growls again. “Let him _go_.”

“You’re not the alpha anymore, Derek.” Peter puts pressure on Stiles’s neck, and Stiles tilts his head and bares his throat to him. Derek growls again, and Peter shakes his head. “You have no claim on him.”

Derek rolls his shoulders, widens his stance. Stiles has seen it a hundred times. He’s ready to fight. His whole body is screaming for blood. 

“Please,” Stiles whispers.

Derek turns his head sharply and fixes his narrow gaze on him.

“Please.” Stiles twists his fingers in Peter’s shirt. “Please, Peter, don’t let him take me.”

Derek flinches back as though he’s been struck. “Stiles…”

Peter rubs his thumb along Stiles’s throat. “Step back, Derek, you’re scaring him.”

Derek lifts his nose to scent the air, and then steps back like Peter asks. He prowls back and forth in front of the doorway, fingers flexing, staring at them. Stiles stares at his feet, and tries to bury himself in Peter’s arms.

“Shh,” Peter says, and Stiles can hear the smile in his voice, and knows this is as much for Derek’s benefit as his. He doesn’t begrudge Peter that. “Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

Derek’s growl wavers this time.

Peter keeps one hand cupped around the back of Stiles’s neck. His other hand rubs up and down his spine. It’s not enough to make Stiles forget that Derek’s here, staring, _growling_ , but he remembers that he’s supposed to be strong, and that no growling fucking dog is going to make him step away from the man who saved him.

The man who understands him.

The man who _loves_ him.

Stiles turns his head and stares back at Derek.

He knows the moment that Scott gets close; both Derek and Peter freeze and watch the door. It’s another few moments before Stiles hears feet clambering up the steps. Maybe… maybe even more than one person?

Scott bursts into the loft. He hasn’t transformed yet, but his eyes are glowing alpha red. And behind him…

_Dad._

Stiles’s mouth makes the shape of the word, but no sound comes out.

Scott juts his chin out. “Let him go, Peter.”

“Now _you_ ,” Peter says, his voice as unruffled as always, “you have a claim as his alpha. It might not be a strong as you think, but it’s still a claim.”

“Let him go!”

Peter lifts his hands from Stiles and takes a step back. Stiles follows him.

“Stiles!” Scott sounds aghast, and Derek growls again.

“Stiles,” his dad says. “Kiddo.”

Stiles shakes his head against Peter’s chest. “Go away. Go away!”

“Shh.” Peter runs his fingers through Stiles’s hair.

“Stiles.” His dad’s voice is somehow as calm as Peter’s. “Look at me, son, please.”

Stiles does.

“Jesus.” His dad’s face pales, and he drops his hand to his utility belt, to his firearm. “Jesus, Stiles, your face…”

Stiles had almost forgotten the cut. He feels a stab of guilt to see his dad’s obvious distress, but then reminds himself that this is _necessary_. This is because they need to know Stiles belongs to Peter now. They need to see it, whenever they look at him. He’s not theirs. He’s Peter’s, only.

“I wanted it,” he says, jutting his chin out.

Peter hums in agreement. He tightens his grip in Stiles’s hair, dips his head sideways, and licks the length of the cut. Stiles shudders, and clings to him.

Scott and Derek roar.

“I wanted it!” Stiles repeats. The wolves are approaching now, stalking Stiles and Peter. Fangs and claws and ridged brows. “I _wanted_ it!”

“Did you want him to rape you too?” Derek spits.

Peter’s laugh is low in Stiles’s ear.

Stiles is terrified, but he’s angry too. His rage is rising as fast as his fear. He doesn’t know which one of them will win. “It wasn’t like that!”

 _It was_ exactly _like that_ , the traitorous voice in the back of his head tells him.

His gaze finds his dad.

“It wasn’t like that,” he whispers.

“Okay.” His dad sucks in a shaking, audible breath. “Okay, son. Come home, and we’ll talk about it.”

“No!” Why won’t they listen to him? He doesn’t want to go anywhere, except with Peter. Why are they trying to hurt him like this? His eyes sting with tears. “Leave us alone!”

“Stiles,” his dad begins.

“Leave us alone!” The scream tears out of his throat. He’s aware of Peter trying to shift him, trying to push him behind him. He knows there’s only one reason Peter would do that. Through his tears, he sees Scott and Derek still approaching. “No! _No!_ Don’t hurt him!”

He’s close to a panic attack, and he hasn’t had one of those since before Peter. He can’t suck enough air into his lungs, and his vision is going dark at the edges. His heartbeat races. Too fast. Much too fast.

“Stiles?” Peter’s voice is sharp with worry. “Sweetheart?”

Stiles can’t breathe.

“Get back!” Peter growls at the wolves as Stiles slumps over in his embrace.

He’s not aware of much else. It’s darkness mostly, with some stuff going on in the periphery he can barely grasp. He’s lowered onto the floor, and Peter’s holding his hand. Then someone else is looming over him, and it’s his dad, and he’s talking to him, talking at him, but Stiles can’t really make out the words.

 _Breathe_ , probably.

His dad usually tries to remind him to breathe.

He’s not going to pass out now though. Not this time. He’s going to hold onto consciousness with every ounce of strength he has, because Peter told him to be strong, so that’s how it’s going to be. Peter shapes Stiles’s universe any way he wants.

Stiles is strong because of him.

“Peter,” he whispers, clutching his hand tighter. He knocks their hands against his stomach, bumping their knuckles against the fabric of his shirt repeatedly until Peter gets the message.

Peter’s mouth curls up into a smile. He draws the hem of Stiles’s shirt up with his free hand.

“Jesus,” Stiles’s dad says, and Stiles thinks that maybe his face is ashen. Everything’s still a little too blurry, a little too shaky, to be certain.

“Please,” Stiles whispers, and Peter taps a claw against his abdomen.

The sudden sting is sharp and sweet.

The scent of his own blood is heady.

A rush of bubbling pleasure follows the pain, and just like that Stiles can breathe again. His hands are shaking, his body trembling, but he can breathe again.

He blinks up at Peter and his dad.

“What the fuck have you done to my son?” his dad asks, voice cracking.

 _Dad_ , Stiles tries to say, but can’t find his voice yet.

Peter smirks. “I gave him exactly what he needed.”

_Dad._

His dad moves more quickly than Stiles would have thought possible. He has his gun out, pointed at Peter, and _fires_ , before Stiles can even scream.

He screams afterward though.

He can’t stop screaming.

 

***

 

Stiles sits in the shower, letting the water run over his shoulders and the back of his neck. The bathroom door is open, and he knows his dad is lurking just outside. Every now and then he sticks his head around the door, as though he’s checking Stiles is still there.

Stiles won’t look at him.

The bullet wasn’t wolfsbane, but it was enough to catch Peter off guard. It was enough to subdue him long enough for Scott and Derek to attack. Long enough for them to drag him away.

His dad says Peter isn’t dead, but Stiles doesn’t know if he should believe it or not.

Back at Derek’s loft, back when he finally stopped screaming, his dad had caught him by the wrists and forced him to look at him. “Stiles, you know why I did it, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he’d answered truthfully. “And I hate you.”

He hasn’t said anything since then.

The water ran cold a while ago, but Stiles doesn’t care. He’s shivering, and doesn’t really notice. He wishes they’d never come back to Beacon Hills. He wishes Peter had listened to him. Scott and Derek and his dad were never going to let them live here in peace. They should have stayed in San Francisco. Fuck pack territory. They’d had all the territory they needed between the walls of Peter’s apartment in the terrace house.

His chest aches, and Stiles hunches over.

No. He knows, in theory, how important pack and territory are to wolves. He knows that as a human he’ll only ever feel a fraction of the same pull. He remembers when he was at a school camp when he was nine and he'd cried for the first two nights because he was homesick. Heartsick. He wonders what it would be like to feel that every night and every day, even more intensely.

And who will ease Peter out of his nightmares now?

Who will stop Stiles from getting his own?

He forces himself to concentrate on taking long, slow breaths. He won’t let panic overtake him. He lifts his head and blinks water out of his eyes. His shirt and jeans and underwear are sitting in a tangled mess on the floor.

Maybe he should get dressed and try and climb out the window without his dad seeing. He could go back to Derek’s loft, or to Scott’s house. He could demand to know what they’ve done with Peter.

He sees a corner of red paper peeking out of the pocket of his jeans, and remembers the present from the gas station that Peter gave him in the car. Shuffling over to the edge of the shower, Stiles leans out and hooks his jeans closer. He pulls the little package out, his wet fingers almost dissolving the thin red paper.

Razor blades.

Stiles’s heart beats faster. He tears the package open, and finds five individually wrapped blades inside. He retreats back into the shower with one and unwraps it with trembling fingers.

Peter _knew_.

Okay, he probably didn’t know Stiles’s dad would shoot him, but he knew they’d be separated. He knew, and he’d given Stiles the razor blades so he could take care of himself. He could try to find the same calm and focus, the same pleasure, with the blades that he could with Peter’s claws.

Peter knew.

Apartment 6. Hilltop Place, on Pine.

He’d told Stiles his address because he’d known that Stiles would have to take the final steps on his own.

God, Stiles hopes that was it.

He hopes Peter was right. He hopes their luck doesn’t run out now.

He lifts the razor blade to his left arm, staring at the pink scar from the first cut Peter ever opened on him. He remembers Peter’s low voice, telling him to open his eyes, telling him to watch. He remembers the burst of endorphins that had flooded him.

Stiles sets the edge of the razor against his arm, on top of that first scar. For a moment he considers reopening it, but then he decides that no, that scar is Peter’s alone. He shifts the blade over slightly, hissing as he digs it in and his skin parts as easily as overripe fruit. Blood wells, and is washed away under the shower. Water, tinged with red, runs in rivulets from his arm. It’s clear again by the time it hits the bottom of the shower.

His left arm. His left thigh. A sharp, stinging kiss of the blade on the thin skin above his collarbone. That one is so shallow, but bleeds like a bitch. Feels so fucking good. Two tiny nicks against his left hip, and then he transfers the blade to his other hand and goes hunting for more skin.

He’s floating.

God. He can hear the low, possessive things that Peter whispers in his ear. He can feel Peter’s touch on his skin.

His dick is hard.

He moans, and presses the blade into the fleshy part of his palm.

“Stiles! _Stiles!_ ”

 Stiles opens his eyes and peers up through the spray of the shower.

His dad reaches down for him, digging his fingers into the tendons of his wrist until it hurts and the razor blade drops from his grip. “Jesus, kid!”

He hauls Stiles out of the shower, bundles him into a towel, and it’s not until they’re halfway down the hall that Stiles realizes his dad is crying. His dad ushers him into his bedroom, and Stiles blinks around at the familiar posters on the wall, and the detritus of his life strewn all over the desk, and the bookshelf, and, yeah, the floor too. There’s an open Economics textbook lying on the floor beside his bed, which seems ludicrous. Surely school was an entire lifetime ago.

His dad peels the towel off him. It’s streaked with blood in places now. Stiles’s skin is still damp when his dad opens up the first aid kit and starts to clean him up. Stiles stares at the posters on his wall rather than his dad’s face. He doesn’t want to see it all crumpled and broken and wet with tears.

“Why did you…”

Stiles hunches over slightly and refuses to answer.

“Stiles?”

“I want Peter.” His voice is still raw from all the screaming.

“Kiddo, he _hurt_ you.”

Stiles still won’t meet his eyes. “He helped me.”

His dad’s hands shake as he presses a Band Aid over the shallow cuts on his hip. “Stiles, he raped you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Okay.” His dad seems to have recovered some of his equilibrium. “Then tell me how it was. Tell me how it wasn’t rape.”

Stiles clamps his mouth shut.

“Son?”

“I want Peter.” He twists away from his dad’s ministrations. “I hate you.”

His dad pulls a pair of pajama pants out of Stiles’s drawer and hold them out to him. “Get dressed, Stiles.”

Stiles sits on the end of his bed and pulls the pants on. He picks at the end of a Band Aid, and glowers at the floor.

“Come downstairs with me,” his dad says. “I’ll make you some dinner.”

“Not hungry.”

“I want you to eat something before you take your Adderall.”

“I don’t need Adderall.”

“Stiles.”

“I’m not taking it! I don’t need it!”

“Yeah,” his dad says, a hint of something sharp in his tone that Stiles has never heard before. “Yeah, you’re doing great. Just _look_ at you.”

 

 

***

 

Stiles eats half a bowl of chicken soup and falls asleep on the couch. His dad won’t let him go up to bed. Apparently he thinks the cutting was some sort of suicide attempt. Stiles can’t be bothered explain that he’s less suicidal now that he was two weeks ago, that he wants to live for Peter, not die for him.

His dad calls Scott’s mom Melissa to come over and watch him. Melissa sits in the armchair opposite the couch. She asks him a few questions in her most soothing tone of voice, but Stiles ignores her. It reminds him a little of when he was possessed by the nogitsune. The look on her face when he’d taunted her about why Scott’s dad had left. And, afterward, the way she’d been afraid to touch him, to talk to him, even when the nogitsune was gone.

Above him, the floorboards creak every now and then as his dad does whatever the hell he’s doing up there. Stiles hates to think. Probably removing everything from Stiles’s room except a bare mattress. Stiles doesn’t care. He won’t be staying under the same roof as the man who shot Peter. 

He closes his eyes and dozes, trying to ignore the ache in his throat that’s not just from screaming. It’s from the tears he’s struggling to hold back as well.

When he opens his eyes again it’s night, and for a second he doesn’t know where he is. Memories of what happened in the loft overwhelm him, and he gasps for breath. He looks over at the armchair, but it’s empty.

He can hear voices from the kitchen. His dad and Melissa. And Scott and Derek too.

He sits up.

“I’m the alpha, so it’s my decision!”

“He’s my uncle.” Derek’s voice is surprisingly soft. Not a growl for once. “That makes it my problem!”

Melissa says something then, too soft for Stiles to catch it. He runs a hand through his hair, and climbs to his feet. He moves quietly toward the kitchen, and listens.

“Just don’t kill him.”

“Sheriff?” Scott sounds outraged. “You must be joking!”

“Scott, I just picked my son up off the floor of the shower, where he’d been slicing himself open with a razor blade. I’m not really in the mood to makes jokes.”

“He’s awake,” Derek says suddenly. “He’s listening.”

Fuck it.

Stiles rounds the corner and leans in the kitchen doorway. He keeps his arms at his sides. He doesn’t try to hide the web of cuts, old and new, written across his skin.

“Holy fuck.” Scott’s eyes flash red.

Derek clenches his jaw.

Melissa closes her eyes briefly.

His dad looks tired. And old.

“I know you think I’m crazy,” Stiles tells them. “I know you think he’s fucked with my mind so much that I don’t know what I’m doing. But I need him, and I love him, and if you hurt him, I will hate you for the rest of my life.”

It’s Melissa who speaks first. “Stiles, I know that you believe that now, but with the right therapist—”

“No.” Stiles shakes his head. “If you try and take me away from him, I’ll find a way to make you regret it.”

His dad’s face crumbles. “Son…”

“I’ll kill you,” Stiles says. “Or I’ll kill myself.”

Something like that should sound more dramatic, probably, but then, why? It’s a simple statement of fact.

“Stiles!” Scott looks horrified. He takes a step toward him.

Stiles takes a step back. “Where’s Peter?”

Scott’s brow furrows. “Stiles, come on, please.”

“Where’s Peter?”

“Stiles.” Scott’s eyes gleam with tears, and he shrugs his shoulders hopelessly. “Listen—”

“No!” Stiles clenches his hands into fists. His right hand throbs where he cut it with the razor, and the Band Aid feels strange. “ _You_ listen. All of you. Peter is the only one who listens to me. He’s the only one who understands me. I _love_ him, and he loves me.”

“He doesn’t love you, Stiles.” Derek shakes his head. “He’s manipulated you. That’s what he does.”

“Fuck you, Derek. You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

“Enough!” His dad holds up his hands. “Enough. Stiles, kid, I’m sorry. I know you hate me right now. Hell, you might hate me for the rest of my life and yours, but as far as I’m concerned, you’ve left me no other choice. You need professional help.”

“No! Are you fucking kidding me?”

His dad’s face is set. “I can’t help you, Stiles, and neither can Peter Hale.”

“Dad.” Fear twists his guts. His tears start to fall. “Please. I want to go with Peter.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Dad, I—”

“Look at you! Look what he did!”

Stiles hugs his arms to his chest. “Dad, please!”

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m sorry.”

Stiles tries to run, but it’s pointless. He can’t outrun Scott and Derek. He doesn’t even make it as far as the front door.

 

 

***

 

It’s not Eichen House, at least.

This place is two hours out of Beacon Hills. It’s newish. There’s a waiting list, Stiles gathers, but between his dad and Melissa they pull enough strings to get him straight in. Straight into a bed with a three-point restraint system.

“Dad?”

His dad just watches as the orderlies cuff his arms and legs to the corners of the bed, then fasten the thick strap across his chest.

“Dad!”

Stiles bucks against the mattress uselessly.

“Dad, don’t! Don’t! What if it finds me again, Dad? What if the nogitsune finds me again?”

One of the orderlies clicks his tongue. He’s probably heard a hundred crazier things tonight. “Five minutes, Sheriff Stilinski.”

The orderlies leave.

“Dad, don’t let them kill Peter, please! Please!” He’s sobbing. “I was happy. I was _happy_ , but he brought us back to Beacon Hills and now everything’s ruined.”

“Stiles.” His dad swipes a thumb across his cheekbone, brushing away his tears. “You weren’t happy. You were confused.”

“Why don’t you _listen_? Why doesn’t anyone ever listen?”

“Stiles. You’re a smart kid. You know what this is. You _know_.”

“It’s not Stockholm Syndrome.”

“Kiddo, it’s textbook.”

“He loves me too, Dad, and there is nothing fucking textbook about it. I haven’t had a nightmare since we’ve been together!”

His dad looks taken aback.

“He helped me. He’s still helping me!”

His dad’s expression hardens again. “You’ll feel better soon. You’ll be back to your old self.”

“Dad…” He wants to tell him there’s nothing left of his old self. The nogitsune murdered him. He wants to tell him everything, but how can he, when his dad won’t listen? “How long do I have to stay here?”

“Forty-eight hours,” his dad says. “After that, you’ll be assessed again.”

Forty-eight hours to convince some psychiatrist that he’s not suicidal. He’s not, so it should be easy enough, right? Except the deck’s stacked against him already, and the scars and cuts won’t exactly help his case.

“Promise me that you won’t let them hurt Peter?”

“Stiles…”

“Please, Dad. Please.”

“Fine,” his dad says at last.

“Thank you,” Stiles says, pushing the word out on a shaking breath, and meaning it.

“Just…” His dad sighs. “You just concentrate on getting better, okay?”

Stiles nods.

In forty-eight hours he’ll be out of here, and he’ll be with Peter again, and he’ll be happy. And there’s nothing his dad, or Scott, or Derek can do to stop them.

 

***

 

That night Stiles has the first nightmare he’s had in weeks.

He wakes up screaming.

A nurse gives him a sedative, when it’s not a sedative he needs at all.

It’s a warm body curled around his. It’s a claw tapping against his skin. It’s a blindfold over his eyes. It’s Peter, whispering dark, low words of ownership and possession in his ear as the stars wheel in the sky above them.

It’s fangs against his jugular.

It’s blood.

It’s _Peter_.

Stiles fights the sedative as long as he can, tears sliding down his cheeks.

“Peter,” he whispers to the darkness. “I love you too.”


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

 

Don’t fail me now

-from “Toy Soldiers” by Marianas Trench

***

 

It’s the longest forty-eight hours of Stiles’s life. There’s a fine fucking line between knowing you’re being watched, which he is, and acting paranoid about it, which he feels he has every right to be. On top of that, Stiles is battling against his memories of Eichen House and all the shit that went down there. Of the nogitsune.

_Let me in, Stiles._

_Let. Me. In!_

He doesn’t cause a fuss. Doesn’t fight the orderlies or the nurses. He takes his meds and shuts his eyes and tries to remember the dimensions of the apartment in San Francisco. He tries to find comfort in the darkness, the way Peter showed him, instead of terror.

He talks to the doctor. Tells him honestly that he doesn’t want to die. Tells him, less honestly, that cutting gives him control, because he’s pretty sure he’s read that’s what it’s about for most people. And then, under the doctor’s patient gaze, he falters and talks about how _good_ it feels. How there’s so much fucking chaos crawling under his skin sometimes, that the pressure builds and builds, and something has to give, and it’s his skin that does, that splits, and the blood is like a reward.

The doctor listens patiently. He seems unsurprised, and Stiles wonders if maybe that’s what it’s like for most people after all.

He doesn’t say the smell of blood makes his dick hard.

He doesn’t say that sometimes bleeding feels as good as coming.

As understanding as this doctor might be, an admission like that isn’t going to get Stiles a pass out of here. So instead he talks about his home life, about his failing grades, about his dad and the older boyfriend he doesn’t approve of, and wonders if the doctor knows he’s making this shit up as he goes along.

Stiles has always been a good liar.

This is surface stuff. Nothing that happens here can even touch him where it counts. Just like with the nogitsune, Stiles is locked down in his own body. He’s been pushed into the role of audience member in his own life. He watches the way he interacts with the staff and the patients here. He listens to the things he says. It’s not _him_. The difference this time is that Stiles has locked himself away for protection, and let this other Stiles, this fake Stiles, the one he invents by degrees as he talks with the doctor, take charge for now.

Stiles will shed him like a snake sheds its skin the moment he’s out of here.

It’s only forty-eight hours.

He can do it.

He hopes he can, but he’s never been good at waiting.

And waiting in a place like this, where all the colorful art on the walls can’t disguise the fact that the beds are _hospital_ beds, reminds him of when he was a kid and he sat around in a beige room under a flickering light and waited for his mom to die.

He hates hospitals.

He hates the daytime soap operas on the TV.

He hates the food.

He hates the cold, antiseptic taste of the air.

He hates that he has nothing to do but take his meds and watch the clock.

Minutes stretch into hours that stretch into something that doesn’t even make sense anymore. But, fuck, maybe that’s his meds.

He has another session with the doctor, and can’t understand how any of this is supposed to _help_ , and not just him—he doesn’t need their help—but anyone. This is a strange, cold, unhappy environment. Stiles thinks he could spend a lifetime here never tell them what he’s really thinking. The blank walls and the stale air make him want to hoard all his secrets. This place would leech all the color from them.   

He hates how everyone talks in whispers and low voices here.

He wants to shed his skin and get the fuck out.

He picks at his scabs with his blunt nails, before he catches himself doing it.

He’s stronger than that.

It’s not forty-eight hours in the end, like they said. It’s closer to sixty, and Stiles is edgy. He asks once if his dad is coming to take him home today, and the nurse says something vague and non-committal. Stiles doesn’t dare ask again. If he gets too upset, or even seems to be, he’ll ruin everything. It’s so precarious. He feels like he’s balancing on the edge of a knife. He can’t afford a misstep.

When the door to the rec room opens at last and his dad walks in, Stiles can’t stop the broad smile from spreading across his face. “Dad!”

His dad smiles too, and his whole face crumples into teary relief as he embraces Stiles. They sit on the big couch in the corner while they wait for the doctor to come and talk to them. His dad holds his hand tightly, while Stiles tries to think of what to tell him:

_I’m only smiling because you’re my ticket out of here._

_You shot him. Did you really expect me to forgive you?_

_Don’t touch me._

He keeps his mouth shut for once in his life, and thinks of Peter instead.

He can barely suppress a shiver when his dad signs the discharge papers.

He’s free.

But he’s not complete.

 

***

 

“Hey,” Scott says. “Welcome home, buddy.”

Stiles sees the look that passes between Scott as his dad, as though he’s some fragile little figure made out of glass, and the tiniest vibration will shatter him. That’s the difference between them and Peter, he supposes. They think he’s weak. Peter only ever broke him to marvel at his strength.

“Hey.” Stiles shoulders past him and heads up the stairs to his room.

The silence at his back is profound.

Well, what the hell did Scott expect? His thanks?

His room has been cleared out. No obvious hazards. No sharp objects. Even his Adderall is gone. Something in Stiles is deeply amused by that. If he was actually suicidal, he’d find a way to do it. He remembers when he was suicidal, after the nogitsune, but before Peter. It’s only looking back that he realizes how dark a place it was for him then, how lonely and how desperate. Peter probably saved his life by doing what he did. Not that anyone will ever believe that.

It’s ludicrous. Stiles can hardly believe it himself, except he’s the proof of it.

His laptop is missing from his desk. Stiles runs his fingers over the place it belongs, and tries to feel outraged. He’s not, though. He knows exactly where his dad and his friends are coming from by taking away the things he could hurt himself with, and any means of contacting Peter. He _understands_ , even if he knows they’re wrong, and it’s not fair that understanding doesn’t go both ways.

He hears footsteps on the stairs, and looks up. He’s expecting Scott or his dad, but it’s Derek who appears in his doorway. Stiles is too tired to make a joke about Derek finally figuring out what doors are for, instead of just climbing in his window.

“He’s playing you,” Derek says, eyes narrow.

Stiles leans down and picks up a sock from his floor. He wraps it a few times around his wrist, and crosses to sit on the edge of his bed. “Hi, Derek. Nice to see you.”

“He’s playing you,” Derek repeats, a hint of something urgent in his tone. “He’s _manipulating_ you.”

Stiles holds the sock against his wrist for a moment, then lets it drop. “You really think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

Derek quirks a brow.

“Do you think I don’t know what he’s doing? What he’s done? Of course I know. He did exactly what I needed, Derek, so whatever _this_ is—” Stiles huffs out a breath and waves his hand. “Some last ditch attempt at an intervention or whatever, it’s not going to work.”

He can’t read the expression on Derek’s face. He can’t tell if it’s hurt or anger that flashes across it. “Stiles, he doesn’t love you.”

“He does.” Stiles knows Derek can read his heartbeat. He knows he’s telling the truth.

“You think he does, but you know he’s manipulating you!”

Stiles rubs his thumb across the scar on his left forearm. He can still remember the way he held his arm out when Peter told him to do it. He can still feel the hot, sick shock of that first cut. Still see Peter’s steady blue gaze. He smiles a little, although there’s no real amusement behind it. “Who says that love and manipulation are mutually exclusive?”

Peter’s a monster. He knows that.

Peter loves him. He will never doubt it.

“Stiles!” Derek looks horrified, or as close to horrified as Stiles has ever seen him.

 _At night,_ Stiles wants to tell him, _he calls out all their names. He lost them all too, Derek._ He says nothing though, because he knows it won’t make a difference.

He watches Derek for a moment, to give him the chance to say something else, but apparently Stiles isn’t the only one with nothing to say. Derek clamps his mouth shut, and shakes his head.

Stiles wishes he could explain it better. He wishes he could tell Derek that when Peter peels his layers back, it frees him. Peter’s voice, his touch; there’s nowhere for Stiles to hide, and that’s what he needs. Peter saves him.

“Did you hurt him?” he asks, heart beating faster, too afraid to ask the bigger question: _Did you kill him?_  

Derek hears it anyway. “He’s alive.”

Shivering relief washes over Stiles, and almost overwhelms him. He manages a nod, because he won’t _thank_ Derek for not killing Peter. He lurches to his feet, a little dizzy with relief. “Good. Good.”

There’s a duffel bag in the top of his closet. Stiles pulls it down and unzips it. He opens his drawers and hauls a bundle of t-shirts out. Shoves them into the bag. Jeans, and underwear, and socks. His red hoodie. He doesn’t need this stuff, not really, since Peter bought him new clothes from Macy’s, but he thinks it will mean something if he turns up on Peter’s doorstep with a bag in hand. It will mean—fuck, he doesn’t know exactly, but it’s _important_. It’s important that this time the decision is his. It matters.

“Stiles.”

It’s not Derek.

Stiles blinks at Scott’s face.

“Sit down for a second, okay?” Scott guides him back to his bed.

Derek’s still leaning in the doorway.

His dad’s here as well. He takes the chair from Stiles’s desk and places it at the end of the bed. He sits in it, so close that his knees are almost touching Stiles’s. “Talk to me, kiddo.”

Stiles feels a rush of something that almost feels like homesickness at hearing his dad’s quiet, loving tone. His dad has dealt with everything from Stiles’s skinned knees to his mom’s death in that same patient voice. Except he looks at his dad, at his careworn face, at his heartbreak, and thinks only: _You shot Peter_.

Stiles fixes his gaze on his father. “I’m going to Peter.”

“You’re not thinking clearly.”

“Dad.” Stiles curls his fingers into fists and tries to remember to breathe. “Not this again, please. You can put me in the hospital again—”

“Yes, I can.”

Stiles doesn’t flinch. He knows that this is the moment Peter needed him to be strong for. Not some showdown with claws and fangs, but _this_ : the moment he tells his dad to let him go.

“And you can keep doing it until I turn eighteen, but what then, huh?” He doesn’t get any satisfaction from seeing the look of defeat on his dad’s face at the implications of the question. At the unspoken promise Stiles will just go. “What then?” 

“You’re seventeen, and…and Jesus, Stiles.” His dad’s voice cracks. “I don’t even have words for how unhealthy this is!”

“He makes me better.”

Beside him, Scott makes a low, unhappy noise that’s close to a growl. Stiles knows that if he looks at him, he’d see his eyes glowing.

“Stiles.” His dad reaches out and takes his hand. He clasps his other hand around Stiles’s wrist. He turns his arm slightly so that his worried gaze falls on his scars. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

“I know.” Stiles pulls his hand away. “But you don’t need to.”

His dad is silent, his mouth scrunched into a small, unhappy shape and his eyes shining with unshed tears.

“I’m the one who didn’t want to come back,” Stiles says. “I wanted us to stay away, stay hidden. I knew coming back would be a mistake, but this is his _home_.”

“It’s your home too,” his dad reminds him.

It doesn’t feel like it. “His territory, then. Pack territory.”

His dad holds his gaze.

“I have to…” Stiles sits up straighter. “I’m gonna go now.”

He doesn’t know what he expects. Maybe for his dad’s tears to finally start falling, or for Scott and Derek to grab him like last time.

“Dude,” Scott says in a low voice, then “Stiles…”

Stiles doesn’t look at him. He shuffles off the bed, keeping his gaze fixed on his dad. He picks the duffel bag up off the floor, and nobody tries to stop him. A little flare of hope unfurls in his gut.

“Sheriff!” Scott says urgently.

Sometimes, Stiles thinks, Scott forgets that he’s the alpha. Sometimes he still looks to the grownups to have the answers he doesn’t. He’s still a kid, in so many ways. Still basically a good guy, in a world where goodness isn’t anything to be that proud of. It’s just a measure his naivety.

“Let him go, Scott,” his dad says, his voice wooden.

Scott looks distraught. “He _cut_ you! He _raped_ you!”

Scott’s such a child.

Stiles slings the bag over his shoulder and crosses to the door.

Derek’s blocking it. “He’ll go too far,” he says. “He’ll kill you.”

“I’ve made my choice.” Stiles pushes past Derek to leave the room.

  

***

  

Apartment 6. Hilltop Place, on Pine.

Stiles parks his Jeep outside on the street. He knows that Scott and Derek will find him anyway. Hell, they can probably smell where Peter lives. So there’s no point in trying to cover his tracks.

He’s nervous.

Apartment 6 is on the second floor. Stiles takes the stairs instead of the elevator. With the prospect of happiness dangled just in front of his nose, Stiles is afraid it’ll be yanked away somehow, because if there’s one thing the last few years have taught him it’s that the universe can always find a way to fuck things up for him. Why would today be any different? He takes the stairs to try and delay the moment.

His Converse squeak on the steps.

His heart races.

If Peter’s home, he must be able to hear Stiles, to smell him. If Peter’s home, and he’s not hurt, or _worse_. They promised he wasn’t, but Stiles can’t trust that. He can’t trust anything.

Also, this is Peter Hale he’s running to, and Peter always has a fucking end game. Stiles is suddenly terrified of it.

He’s struggling for breath by the time he reaches the door of apartment 6. He raises his hand to knock, his knuckles scraping against the door instead of rapping. His hand is shaking too much.

“Peter.” It’s a whisper.

The door opens.

_God._

Stiles can’t stop the sob of relief that wrenches out of him.

Peter is _alive_.

Stiles drops his bag and steps forward into Peter’s embrace. His warmth, his weight, his scent; these are the things he needs, to keep him from spiraling into fear, and into panic. He hides his face in the crook of Peter’s neck and inhales.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Peter holds him close. His breath ruffles Stiles’s hair. “It’s okay. You’re home now.”

Stiles closes his eyes.

Peter slides a hand up his back. “You smell like hospital.”

Stiles draws a deep breath and straightens up. He holds Peter’s gaze and juts his chin out. “Then make me smell like you instead.”

Peter’s mouth quirks. His eyes are hooded, and his voice low. “Oh, I will, don’t worry about that.”

“But first.” Stiles twists his fist in the fabric of Peter’s v-neck. “First tell me.”

Peter’s smile inches up another few degrees. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me your angle," Stiles says. “You’ve always got one, Peter. _Always_.”

“Hmm. What _did_ those doctors do to you, Stiles? You’ve remembered how to push back.” Peter looks genuinely pleased. He releases Stiles, and brushes his fingers against the healing cut on his cheek. “I like that.”

“Well I just stood up to my dad, and to two angry fucking werewolves,” Stiles tells him. “Pretty sure you don’t scare me anymore.”

Peter laughs, delighted, and Stiles doesn’t even want to know if his heartbeat skipped. “Come through to the kitchen, Stiles. I’m making tea.”

“I don’t want tea,” Stiles mutters, but he lets Peter draw him through to the kitchen. It’s wide and clean and full of glass and chrome. Stiles’s attention is caught by the coffee maker on the counter. “How does that work?”

Peter quirks an eyebrow. “I have no idea. I only bought it yesterday.”

“For me?”

“For you,” Peter confirms, leaning against the counter. He folds his arms over his chest. “And that’s the only angle I’m playing, Stiles.”

“You wanted _me_?”

“I told you that from the start, yes. I wanted you, so I took you.”

Stiles swipes his tongue over his bottom lip. “Right. And it had nothing to do with Scott or Derek.”

Peter shrugs, and raises his brows. “Well, I won’t deny I took pleasure in stealing you out from under their noses. I took something precious to them and made it mine, and I’m sure you ripped their throats out today, metaphorically, more viciously than I ever could have. But all of that is incidental. A happy coincidence. It was you I wanted, Stiles.”

“Bringing me back to Beacon Hills, it was a test.”

“No. It was a _demonstration_.” Peter’s gaze is level, cool. “I don’t like to feel like prey. I don’t want to be hunted until the end of my days. Not by your father and my own pack. They needed to see you make your choice, sweetheart.” His mouth curls at the corners. “And now they’ve seen it.”

 “I’m not anyone’s end game, Peter.” Stiles doesn’t know why he’s pushing. Maybe because this is the first time he has with Peter, since this all began. Maybe because, like turning up with his duffel bag full of clothes, this means something.

He pushes because it’s the first time he’s felt unafraid to.

And Peter indulges him with a knowing smile. “Is it really so hard to believe?”

Stiles doesn’t know how to answer that. He wants to say that yes, it’s _impossible_ to believe, but he and Peter fit so well together. If Stiles needs Peter, then Peter needs Stiles too. Stiles isn’t a victim here—not _just_ a victim. He’s allowed to be something else too. This isn’t Scott’s black and white world. It never has been.

Being here, being with Peter, it isn’t _just_ surrender.

It’s also a sort of victory.

“I had nightmares without you,” Stiles says.

Peter could gloat. He doesn’t though. Instead, he meets Stiles’s gaze and holds it, and his smile is small and rueful. “Me too.”

This is what his dad and Scott and Derek will never understand: _this_. Peter and Stiles meet in the middle where it counts. They lead each other out of the dark.

“Did they hurt you?” Stiles asks, throat aching as he remembers the way Derek and Scott attacked.

“Nothing that won’t heal,” Peter says, his hand going to his stomach.

Stiles closes the distance between them. “Show me.”

Peter peels his shirt up to reveal the pink claw marks across his abdomen. The wounds have knitted, but still look sore and tender.

“Scott,” Stiles says, frowning, his fingers following the marks. He doesn’t need to see Peter’s nod to confirm it. Werewolf healing is accelerated, but it takes longer if the wounds are given by an alpha.

Peter settles his hands on Stiles’s hips. “He thought he was protecting you, sweetheart.”

“I know, I just…” He closes his eyes briefly. “Just, why can’t they leave us alone?”

“They will,” Peter murmurs. He leans his forehead against Stiles’s. “They will, now. You’ve shown them you’re mine. You’ve shown them they can’t separate us. You showed them how _strong_ you are.”

“I am strong,” Stiles murmurs. “I _am_.”

He hasn’t believed it in months, but Peter believes it. And Peter has never lied to him.

“You are.” Peter cups his cheek and tilts his head, and presses his mouth against the healing cut on the side of his face. His tongue is warm and wet as it traces the length of the cut. “So strong, Stiles. You are more than I ever could have hoped for.”

Stiles tilts his head, whispering against Peter’s mouth. “Tell me I never have to leave.”

“Never,” Peter murmurs.

The kiss is gentle, and Stiles shivers. The last of his resistance—not to Peter, but to the idea that they’re allowed this ending without anyone trying to prevent it—slips away under that kiss. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. Stiles has already proved he belongs with Peter. He’s proved he’ll choose Peter over anyone else. If they want him in their lives, they’ll need to come to terms with that. It’s their problem, not Stiles’s. At this point he doesn’t care if he never sees them again.

They’ll always blame Peter, probably, but Stiles knows it was the nogitsune who destroyed the boy he was, the son and the friend.

He breaks the kiss to say the words, because suddenly they’re the most important thing in the universe, and he needs Peter to hear them: “I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart.” Peter’s claws tap against his cheek. “Let’s get you unpacked, hmm?”

 

***

 

Stiles’s skin is still damp from the shower. Beads of water slide down his neck from his wet hair. It tickles, and Stiles wriggles, but can’t wipe the water off. His wrists are tied above him, fastened to the headboard of Peter’s bed.

Stiles feels more exposed than he ever has before.

Peter crosses to the chest of drawers, and flashes him a smug smile. “Look at you, all laid out for me.” The smile sharpens, becomes the predator’s. “I could tear your throat out and you couldn’t even try and stop me.”

There’s only one way to respond to that. Stiles lifts his chin, elongating the line of his throat for Peter.

Peter’s gaze settles on his jugular. “Fuck, sweetheart. I want to _ruin_ you.”

Stiles’s heartbeat stutters. “Ruin me then,” he says.

Peter opens the top draw and draws out the silk scarf Stiles wore as a blindfold in San Francisco. He looks at Stiles, a brow quirked.

“Yes,” Stiles breathes. “Please.”

Peter steps toward the bed. He reaches down and tugs his shirt off, and Stiles’s mouth goes dry as the muscles shift and pull under Peter’s skin. He discards the shirt on the floor, and his hands move to the fly of his jeans. He thumbs the button, his smile sharpening as Stiles, eyes wide, licks his lips. It’s not just sexual arousal. It’s a need deeper than that. He wants Peter closer. He wants to never let him go.

Peter shoves down his jeans and underwear, as proud and unashamed as only a predator could be. His cock is hard and dark, and Stiles squirms a little in anticipation. It might hurt a little since it’s been a few days, but that pain has become so indistinguishable from everything else—the pleasure, the fearlessness, the understanding—that Stiles wants it as much as the rest. He wants Peter’s claws too, to draw stinging lines of hot blood over his skin. To flood him with endorphins.

Peter leans over the bed, the blindfold in his hands. Stiles closes his eyes as the silk brushes his lashes, and sinks immediately into the soft, welcoming darkness where Peter owns every part of him.

“Beautiful,” Peter murmurs, as though Stiles is the one giving him a gift.

He is, maybe. They’re saving each other, aren’t they?

Stiles sighs as Peter climbs onto the bed and settles between his legs. His hands are warm on Stiles’s legs. He holds them apart. His thumbs trace circles on the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, and Stiles finds himself aching for the sharp, sudden sting of a claw, the sort of pain that will flash white underneath the blindfold.

It isn’t pain that comes though. It’s a gentler touch. Cold, and slippery, and Stiles makes a sound not unlike a yelp as Peter rubs his lube-slicked fingers against the cleft of his ass. Peter laughs quietly. Stiles settles back against the mattress, loving the blindfold. Without the distraction of sight, Peter’s touch becomes his entire universe.

He shifts his legs further apart as he feels Peter position himself, feels Peter take him by the hips and jostle him closer. The head of Peter’s cock is heavy and hot against his hole, and Stiles breathes out slowly as Peter pushes in. His nerves spike, and a shiver runs up his spine. It’s right on the edge of unpleasant, but Peter’s closeness compensates for that, and it feels good soon enough. Full. Complete.

“You’re so beautiful,” Peter murmurs, and Stiles hears the wonder in his tone.

He squeezes around Peter’s cock, reveling in the sensations, and in the gasp it pulls from Peter.

In the past he’s been quiet during sex, sunk in sensation. Tonight, though, maybe because he can’t touch, he wants to talk. Wants to connect.

“I love you,” he whispers, and Peter growls approvingly in reply as he pulls back. His first thrust jolts Stiles, and sends a bolt of pleasure through him. As Peter picks up his pace, Stiles’s words become a jumble of sounds— _Peter, love you, please, yes_ —repeated over and over again in an increasingly ragged voice.

Peter leans over him, and Stiles hears the rip of fabric from somewhere above his head. Then he’s being lifted up, his still-bound hands—although not bound to the bed anymore—are being looped behind Peter’s neck. Stiles gasps against Peter’s throat as Peter continues to fuck him, the angle of penetration more intense now. His aching dick rubs against Peter’s abdomen with each thrust.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Peter says, teeth nipping his ear. “Work for it.”

Stiles tries to find a rhythm. He pulls himself up with increasing difficulty, forearms sliding against Peter’s sweat-slick shoulders, and slides back down on Peter’s cock. Each time it punches another few raw, gasping words out of him.

“Peter! Peter!” It rises like a whine in his throat.

Peter digs the fingers of his left hand into Stiles’s hip. He reaches up with his right hand and tugs the blindfold off. Then he curls his fingers against Stiles’s throat. Stiles moans, anticipating claws, but there’s no sudden sharp flash of pain. He feels pressure instead as Peter tightens his grip.

Stiles tries to angle his head away, but Peter’s too strong for him.

It’s hard to breathe, and then…

Then it’s impossible.

Peter’s eyes are as sharp as his smile. “I could _ruin_ you.”

Stiles gags, blinking rapidly. He squirms, trying to push against Peter, but he’s got no leverage, and no fucking breath. His lungs are burnings, his eyes are watering, and his vision is darkening at the edges.

Peter groans, eyes half-closed. “Oh, that’s it, sweetheart. You’re so tight around my cock when you struggle.”

Stiles tries to wrench free. He’s desperate for air. He can hear Derek’s voice in his head: _“He’ll go too far. He’ll kill you.”_

Peter loosens his grip on his throat for a fraction of a second and Stiles sucks in a choking breath.

“P-Peter--”

“Shh, sweetheart.” Peter licks a tear off his cheek. “You’re going to want to conserve your oxygen.” He tightens his grip again.

Stiles is already weak. He has no control of his own limbs. He’s jolted up and down with each one of Peter’s thrusts, as useless as a ragdoll. His face is wet with tears.

He told Peter he could have everything. He did, and it wasn’t a lie, but he’s not ready for this. He’s scared.

“Come on,” Peter growls, thrusting again. The fingers digging into Stiles’s hip sharpen into claws, and the familiar hot shock of it causes Stiles to jerk. Then, somehow, he’s aware that his dick is hard--again? still?--and he rocks into Peter’s next thrust without even understanding what he’s doing.

His fear trickles away with his blood, and suddenly every sensation seems larger, somehow magnified. He can’t breathe, and the pressure in his chest and in his head…fuck, it’s nothing compared to the pressure in his balls. He squeezes his muscles around Peter’s cock.

He’s going to come, or he’s going to pass out.

He doesn’t know which one.

He doesn’t fucking care.

 “That’s it,” Peter growls, pushing Stiles closer and closer to the edge of blackness. His fingers are a vise around Stiles’s throat. “Come on, sweetheart. Show me how perfect you can be.”

Peter’s claws open up his throat.

Pain flares. So does pleasure, and Stiles comes, thrashing and choking, his vision whiting out.

 

***

 

Later, smiling, Peter feeds him takeout noodles in bed and makes soft sympathetic noises as Stiles winces as he swallows. Everything hurts, but Stiles is too tired to mind. He lies back in the bloody sheets and lets Peter pet him gently.

This is a type of victory.

He won’t have nightmares here.

He and Peter are helping one another. They’re _saving_ one another.

He doesn’t need to worry about anything else.

He doesn’t need to _think_ about anything else.

He can be happy, he thinks, if only he doesn’t think about anything else.

Yes, he can be happy here.

He _is_ happy here.

“I love you,” he says, his voice rasping in his raw throat. He’s not tired of saying it yet. He thinks he’ll never be tired of saying it.

Peter’s ice-blue gaze locks on his. The edges of his mouth curl up into a satisfied smile. “I love you too, Stiles.”

There are no wolves in California.

Stiles hears the low, mournful howl from somewhere close outside, hears the heartbreak, and wonders if it’s Scott or if it’s Derek.

Peter catches his speculative look. “Sweetheart?”

Stiles shakes his head and curls closer in Peter’s embrace. “Nothing,” he croaks. “It’s nothing.”

He’ll close the windows before they go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** 
> 
> Thanks to Emma_Sea for beta-reading! 
> 
> And thanks to everyone who stuck with this one to the end.  
> Next time there will be fluff. Promise.


End file.
